


Love on the Brain

by ZuzuPetalsInkBlotao3



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-15 02:54:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15403395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZuzuPetalsInkBlotao3/pseuds/ZuzuPetalsInkBlotao3
Summary: A cynical professor, a bright student. We often ponder how one moment shape the course our lives... living in a backwards, pensive state of mind. See it from the end, to the beginning.





	1. Act Two

**Author's Note:**

> The end is the beginning is the end.
> 
> It will be up to you to decide when and where events have transpired. I'm sure this is annoying in the way it's set up, but it's how I envisioned it.

Love on the Brain  
By Zuzu Petal

 

She’s crying, the memories are too great. She’s finally opened up about her parents... her real parents. I have been curious but not insensitive enough to ask. She reaches for me but stops... fuck it. Sometimes you just need a hug, as my mom always said.

I embrace her, tentatively, extremely aware of how this would look should someone walk in. Remembering the times I’ve touched her before or been touched by her. 

Her arms move around me, weakly but the strength is still there. I shh her, rub her back, I feel her tears wet my shirt and I think she smells divine.

Something in my reptilian brain switches on, I know the feeling. Hormonal... primal. All of the natural and unnatural things I’ve felt when near her. 

She’s so sweet the way she sniffles and twists the fabric of my shirt between her fingers. 

She’s soft against me. Lithe, young... here. She tilts her head back and I remind myself I’m comforting her but before I can stop myself I’m kissing her forehead, her skin is damp from the humidity. Stop, don’t do it. Stop me. 

I can taste the salt on my lips.

I kiss her cheek, my lips lingering and I feel those same fingers tighten on my shirt sleeve.

She’s trembling and I like it. 

“Professor,” she whispers and I feel my heart crush itself against my ribcage.

“Shh.” I whisper again. I wonder how this feels to her, is she feeling the same thing or am I really scaring her.

I cup her face, just below the jawline and I press my mouth against hers. And it’s not like the first time when she was shy and it’s not like the second when I was angry. 

I know she has a boyfriend. I know this makes me a bad guy. But when was I ever good?

When our lips make contact she whimpers but I don’t stop, my hands planting themselves firmly at her lower back, dragging her young body against mine.

Like in my fantasy months ago... 

Pressing her into my straining cock, grinding her innocent self against my sinful one.

“But-” she tries to speak again but I don’t let her. Instead I thrust my tongue into her mouth, backing her into my desk where her palms fly flat down to steady herself.

But she isn’t fighting me, she’s kissing me back. She tastes like the gummy bears she had eaten earlier, like sugar... like spice, like everything nice. 

Because despite the awkward veneer she presents in public and even to her friends and family, Michael is a good person. Her heart isn’t a twisted place, it holds no room for manipulation or ill will. No, she is my antithesis. 

I pull the small, pearly white buttons on her shirt from their holes, exposing more of her bra and to the touch of my hands over her small breasts. She is a petite but athletic young woman but I urge her back further onto my desk until she sitting at it’s very edge and I’ve made myself a immovable fixture between her thighs. 

There I can more easily move against her as her skirt is forced higher up her legs. I feel her hands, mostly at my arms, touching me; feeling the muscles tingle and flex beneath her pure touch. 

My fingers find the ties at the bottom of her shirt; a white button up crop top with blue polka dots. Back to skirts and summer dresses as the months begin to warm everything around us. 

She breathes out an unsteady breath as my palm closes around one breast, feeling roughly and with purpose; to evoke the most sinful rapture from her. To coax it out of her mind, body and soul.

“Does he touch you like this?” I ask her, but only for my own ego. She won’t meet my eyes, not right away, “Maybe just over your shirt,” I go on, sliding my hand under the cup of her bra. “Maybe in his car or your bedroom at your folks place; somewhere you’ve had to keep quiet. Maybe your apartment when your roommate is home...” 

She’s shaking, her hands are at my waist, pulling me and pushing me and grinding her core against me. 

I rub my roughened thumb over her tit and she mumbles something I can’t hear or maybe I just don’t want to. Maybe I’m just too far gone to care.

“How about lower, huh?” I move my hand, ghosting my fingertips along her flat stomach, taking immense pleasure in the way the little hairs stand on edge and her flesh turns pimply from the chill it’s conjuring from her. “Over your panties, maybe,” I keep going, I know what it’s doing to her; she once said she loved my voice... “maybe you never let him go farther than that, maybe you were scared. Are you scared now?” 

Michael finally looks at me and I know a part of her is afraid... maybe not of me, perhaps just of what we’re doing.

“How about now?” I don’t beat around the bush, instead I trace my finger along the damp slit of her panties; they’re smooth cotton, I wonder if they’re white too. When she doesn’t answer I gently prod at the area that’s the wettest, right at her center. She groans deep in her chest, lying her forehead against my shoulder. “Now?” I’m moving my fingers inside her panties, she’s letting me, she’s even spreading her legs further apart.

“He hasn’t, has he?” I tip her head back and she kisses me hard, passionately, desperately. As if that will shut me up. But I know she likes it.

“No.” She breathes against my lips as my tongue enters her mouth as my finger finally makes contact with her dripping quim and she shudders and bucks against the invading digit. 

She’s panting against my face, her eyes half open half closed, her lips parted and soon she’s pressing down on my finger and it slips inside and she cries out in pain but doesn’t ask me to stop. 

“Deeper?” I whisper in her ear and she nods, her forehead even sweatier with perspiration.  
“Yes... yes.” She manages to stutter. 

I’m knuckle deep, pulling out to push into her again and she’s whimpering all kinds of beautiful sounds that makes me want to cum. Instead I take her hand and press it to the front of my jeans. 

“Did you ever touch him?” I ask her, she nods a little, blushing more furiously than before. “Did it feel like this?” She shakes her head and I feel another rush of masculine pride. 

“It... nothing has never felt like this.” She whispers, looking into my eyes and for a moment I contemplate stopping. Then she squeezes me a little harder and all rational and moral thought is thrown out the window. My moral compass is shot to pieces. Who gives a fuck?”

I test her pussy with a second finger, then I’m penetrating her deeply and rapidly and she’s clutching my shoulder with her free hand as she strokes me through my jeans and I groan against her cheek. I can smell her sex in the air, our combined sweat, her breath, the primitive sounds my fingers create from entering and retreating from her body. 

She’s crying... I don’t need to look at my fingers to know why the texture of her wetness has altered. She was a virgin... well, I can feel guilty about that later. 

Despite the pain she must be feeling she’s trying to tackle my belt as I slow the thrusting of my fingers, steadily toying with her clit with my thumb that makes her hands shake. She flinches when the metal of the belt slaps against her thigh, surely it will leave a bruise; another reminder of this evening for her to look back on later.

I scoot my jeans down just enough and wedge myself even further between her legs. She’s looking between us as I run my significant length along her pussy, spreading her... lancing her. 

I want to tell her to look at me, that staring at my violation of her purity will only frighten her more. But I don’t... it’s her choice, after all. I begin easing it into her, slowly at first, her knees moving higher up to my sides. Her body naturally trying to find a more comfortable position. When Michael daydreamed of losing her virginity I wonder if this was ever a scenario that crossed that overactive brain of hers? 

We’re cheek to cheek when I press inside fully, grunting at the sensation, she hiccups and grows still and quiet. But fuck, I’ve been enveloped by an angel and I can’t stop. I’ll hate myself later... later, it’ll always be later.

I wrap my arm around her back until my hand is gripping the back of her neck from behind and I begin rutting into her with an animalistic ardor. I hear a whimpered “please”, a sob, a moan but she’s still holding me tight with her legs, pulling me deeper into her until I’m sure I’m hurting her. 

She feels like a glove that’s smooth but a size too small, Christ... I know I’m hurting her. 

I tell myself to stop, I try to will myself to stop but she keeps bringing me back to her. Making me fit.

“It hurts...” She finally says and I’m about to put this madness I started to an end when she smiles, strangely, almost dreamlike. “I need it to.”

“Why?” 

She doesn’t respond, she just slides a hand up the front of my t-shirt, feeling my chest. 

“Don’t stop.” She begs when she feels my pace beginning to slow. “Finish it.” 

When she finally cums I’m so close to the edge it hurts, she goes quiet but her face is screaming her pleasure. I collapse against her, heaving my seed inside her womb, breathing hard into her chest that it could’ve knocked the beat of her heart off kilter.

I feel our combined wetness pooling between us and I realize I tore her panties at some point nearly in half. They were white... white and stained with tiny droplets of red. 

Michael is pulling my attention away from her damaged underwear, back to her, kissing me again. Slower, with meaning with love. With everything I’m incapable of giving her. She should’ve lost it to her boyfriend in the backseat of his car, with them giggling and fumbling their way through it. It should’ve been in her bed, comfortable and safe... anywhere but this hell hole.

It should’ve been with someone she loved.

But lust was a powerful motivator and as long as it remained as such there would always be lonely old professors willing to take advantage of it.

Michael should’ve been taken in love, not lust. How did it even start?


	2. Act Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time is a funny thing. We try to make memories fit into the fabric of time, but uncertainty haunts us.

Time is a funny thing... sometimes the days or weeks blur together for me, depends on how much I’ve drank but I knew it had to of been at least seven days or longer since we’d spoken. She remained quiet in class, studiously taking notes but she seemed adamant to not participate in class or discussions or even debates which I knew at this point was very unlike her.

What else was I expecting after the class retreat? I had humiliated her when she expressed her feelings for me. It might have been in private but to someone like Michael who hid her emotions behind a glass wall of borderline snobbish behavior I knew deep down it might have well of been in front of a whole auditorium of onlookers. 

What did she want me to do? There was no proverbial sunset for us to ride off into. There was no way this would end anyway but badly and moving states away to hide from the stigma didn’t sound appealing to me in the slightest.

I didn’t exactly deny I didn’t feel something similar. But Michael’s feelings were a delicate infatuation. Mine were of a more mature mind set, a base nature. She was so innocent she didn’t picture the same carnal longing I felt. 

I wanted to ruin her, she wanted to save me. It was insulting that she would take me on as some sort of pet project; something to fix instead of someone to just accept. 

I wanted to help you but I fell... I think I’m in love with you...

Potent, pretty, toxic words wrapped up in a ivory white ribbon and faux sweetness wrapping paper. A sacrine display of femininity...

But I knew better, however my reaction to her admission was the real toxicity in our relationship. Because, fuck me, I’m a self sabotaging bastard.

You’ll never let yourself be happy because god forbid that means changing yourself, Kat had once said to me. She was right. I wasn’t afraid to change, I simply didn’t want to.

At least not for her. 

Tell me you don’t feel the same, Michael had said, with hope in her trusting eyes I would say the exact opposite. Or maybe she said something similar or close to it, memory likes to add and deny certain things. 

I don’t. I feel something else, something you’re not prepared for and probably never will be.

Stinging words that were half truth. An inbred cocktail of bullshit on top of fear.

Oh.

Oh, indeed. 

I went on about my reputation. About how this would make me look, how she would be perceived. Then I went for the jugular.

And for your information the only person that needs saving is you. Look at you; sheltered and privileged your whole life even from the death of your parents. You’ve never really suffered. You cry for two people you didn’t even know. You never learned their fears or what made them feel guilty late at night. Maybe they never even wanted you or cared. Maybe you were just an accident they got stuck with-

She struck me at some point during my tirade and I remember twisting her wrist to the point of pain, another slap from the opposite hand and I had easily subdued her. 

Maybe none of it matters. 

I kissed her, forcing her to see a person’s true colors. Throwing myself off the pedestal she put me on before it was too high with no hope of coming down. Showing her what real lust is like; that it’s not like in the movies. That it’s a penetrating, forceful and dirty entity. 

That’s how I feel, when the kiss was over and I had her crying in my arms. Nothing more. I’d use your cunt until there was nothing left of you to take. Then... I’d move on. 

I waited for her to leave, file a complaint, threaten to sue. None of those things happened.

Maybe that’s what I want. But what do I know? I’m just some pathetic little girl you love to hate. 

The pattern didn’t match or follow... it didn’t make sense. She shouldn’t want this. Persephone never actively sought Hades. Why was she changing the pattern now?

Classes were canceled the following two days due to a freak of nature snow storm, we were far up north it wasn’t uncommon but the weather for late October had been mild; now we were in for an early winter and fall was cut short. I kept inside, to myself. Digging my car out at least three times before the snow eventually began to thin out. 

I imagined driving through a blizzard to see her, where she would be waiting, warm and wet for me. Fucking her into oblivion as the world collapsed into another ice age around us. Keeping warm with her during these coldest of months, keeping her safe.

But I wasn’t a safe choice. I was the wrong choice. Kat’s father had seen it, her mother had ignored it because of my veteran status but still remained a waspy snob. Even my own father used to call me Dark Horse. 

It’s the night before classes should return to normal, the telephone rings. It’s probably Sydney. 

“Hey firecracker,” I say as I answer the phone, inhaling deeply.  
“Dad,” Sydney scolds me in the only way a daughter could. “You’re smoking again.”

“You know I read that smoking actually is good for you now so that’s my excuse,” I say to her, lifting my glass and taking a small sip. 

“Yeah? Was that an Onion article?” Sydney teases, sounding so much like her mother it feels more like a haunting than a blessing.

“It might’ve been. Local Man Believes Smoking Gives Him Longer Life.”

Sydney laughs and it’s a blanket during this hell storm of white shit. 

“How’s school?” I ask her before the conversation can drop into an awkward pause.  
“It sucks,” she complains and I know she’s rolling her eyes. “I just scuttle from class to class keeping my head down.”

“That’s not how I raised you,” I point out. “What happened to my firecracker who punched Ashley Gorman in the eye for pushing down her best friend?”

“That’s before I learned consequence. And as I recall you spanked me for that.”   
“Did I? Don’t listen to me. I’m a terrible father.”

I hear her close a door, she sits down. That’s when I know it. She’s at her mother’s place. She teaches on campus, I should’ve known Sydney would choose to stay with her during her Christmas break; she must have finished classes early and gone home. I don’t say it bothers me, I don’t mention I wish she were here with me instead. 

“How’s your love life?” She eventually asks me and I inhale again.  
“What’s that?”   
“Dad...” Michael’s face flashes in front of my eyes, face wet with tears...  
“Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Sydney sighs, a cat meows and that’s when I know it’s Tinker the big grey maine coon Kat just had to have. 

“Will I see you for Christmas? Mom said it’s cool.” Sydney says with hope in her voice.  
“I never taught you to lie.”   
“Dad...”  
“I’ll think about it. What do you want this year?”

Sydney clicks her tongue at Tinker.

“Hmm... A Tesla?”   
“Ugh, you and Elon Musk can go riding off into the sunset together.”

“Hey, at least he’s loaded and I’ll be set for life with no chance of student debt.”  
“That’s my girl.”

The conversation dissolves into her classes, her love life, some guy named Ben who plays football and I tell her she can do better than some meathead jock. We talk about Kat, briefly, she tells me she’s seeing someone. Some English Lit. Professor with a stupid British name and I imagine he’s ugly with big teeth and I’m punching him. 

I want to point out the irony that my ex-wife is repeating yet another pattern of dating men and their books but I don’t. 

“I better go,” Sydney finally says.   
“I love you firecracker.”  
“I love you too, dad.”

I hang up first, catch my breath before the emotional rollercoaster begins. She’s with her fucking mother. She wants me to go to my ex-wife’s house with her stupid British boyfriend and listen to him be arrogant and pompous while she unwraps the silly gifts I give my daughter. Sydney means well. But sometimes your kids don’t realize until they get older how heartless their good intentions feel.

I want to tell Sydney to ask her mother why we never celebrated Hanukkah or visited my folks during those times, why her family always came first and my father went to his grave resenting both Kat and I for it. I want to ask her why her waspy fucking parents never liked that a dirty halfbreed jew married their daughter. I want to tell her to ask her mother why she never took my last name. 

I get drunker and I find my phone.

The number you have dialed is not available at this time, please record you message at the tone... BEEP-

“Hey, it’s me. I’m fucked right now... I hope you’re ennjoyin’ your snow days. Makin’ snow angels and shit. That boyfrund of yours there? Keepin’ you warm. It’s all bullshit. He’ll leave, we always leave-”

I get cut off, the message ends and I don’t remember leaving it until morning when I read a text from her:

You’re a terrible drunk. 

I almost play the coward and don’t go to class. But it’s time to face the music. On my drive in, I remember more of Michael... more of how I should’ve seen all of this coming. It had been so obvious. It had all started the day she twisted her ankle...

X

 

Someone who didn’t know jackshit once said fresh and open air was good for a writer’s mind. Clearly they only wrote bullshit. But the kids deserved some crisp fall air and frankly it was an excuse to get out of the stuffy classroom for a while, there were rumors a freak storm was coming but it might move off and go out to sea. 

My only concern was Michael. 

Six students and one aged professor in a small air B&B in New England. What could possibly go wrong? 

“Come on, nature is calling us and all that crap.” I say, urging them onto the nature trail. I look at Michael, but her limp is gone and she’s walking fine. There was no break or even a sprain, just a twist. I still keep my distance but I walk behind her to make sure she’ll be alright. It’s not the Kangamangus but it’s a hike nonetheless.

During the journey, despite the cool air, I tell them to take a break. Some of these city slicker kids aren’t used to hiking. The rough terrain is hard on their silver spoon feet. Michael relaxes, alone and away from the others with her notepad. I can’t help myself and I make my towards her. I offer her half of my granny smith. She accepts it. 

It’s not the same diary I had once stumbled upon and kept until I could plant it back where I found it as if I had never stolen it to begin with...

“Any inspiration happening up there,” I ask, gesturing to her head, she smiles and blushes.  
“It’s nothing.” She says, holding her notebook away from me and towards her chest. 

“Come on. Sharing is caring.” I say with my hand held out. She hesitates again and then gives in.

“It’s... it’s notes but-”  
“No spoilers, please.” I tell her gently. 

I get comfortable. Her handwriting is of course practically perfect. But her cursive L’s look F’s sometimes but I’ll forgive that because it’s the content of her story that has suddenly gripped me by the intestines.

He pushes me into the couch, I’m terrified. He scares me because of what he forces me to feel, what I’ve never felt for any man. He’s everything, swallowing my moans that I didn’t know I could make in his warm mouth. He’s a black magic man, casting his dark spells around me. I want to fall into his cauldron of desire. I want to give him every inch of me. His hands are healing but can be cruel. His words are like arrows, but they land with the grace of Cupid. His bleeding blue eyes ache to be loved, I want to love him. Even if it means sacrificing all of my innocents for him. I want him to fill me with his-

I snap the notebook closed, handing it back to her.

“I’m sorry.” She says. “I wanted to warn you it was-”  
“Amature, at best. Yeah, you should’ve warned me.” I hurl the insult at her before I can stop myself. I rise and chuck the rest of my apple off into the woods, leaving it to rot. 

“Ok, break’s over.” I announce, clapping my hands together. I don’t walk behind her during the rest of the hike, nor do I on the way back. I keep more distance between us than I ever have before. If I don’t... I’ll lose my mind completely.

I want to give him every inch of me...

Later than that night, after she sneaks through the hall to my room to see me, after I’m done humiliating her, after I’ve brought up her parents and hurt her in ways I never wanted to, after I’ve kissed her and held her crying form, she disentangles herself from me. 

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like I wanted to fix you,” she confesses. I wish she would just leave, her lips are still swollen from my forceful kiss. “I just... you deserve to be loved.” 

I shake my head.

“No I don’t, Michael. Some people are meant to be alone.”  
“But doesn’t that make you sad?” Such a simple, sweet question. She has no idea how much weight it carries. 

“I’m good at being alone,” I tell her. “It comes naturally.”  
“I think that’s terrible. I hate being alone.” she admits, which surprises me because I’ve barely seen her interact with anyone. 

“You should go.” I tell her, she nods but doesn’t move. “Michael.”  
“Maybe I want that,” she says and I frown. “Maybe I want the hurt. The good, the bad. You’ve said some terrible things, things you don’t understand. You only know what I’ve let you see.”

“That goes both ways.” I say.  
“Then you should know I do remember my parents. I remember every moment I had with them. I remember my dad putting shaving cream on my nose, the way my mother smelled. I remember every detail up to the very last. And I hate myself for saying this but I hope you feel like shit right now. Maybe that’s what I want. But what do I know? I’m just some pathetic little girl you love to hate.”

With that she exits silently and sneaks back to her own room, as quiet as a fox in a hen house. 

I groan and I want to break something. She’s right, I do feel like shit.

X

You think you know a person then they go and fuck your life up in ways you can’t imagine. I thought I knew my wife, then I thought I knew my ex-wife. Now I’m getting to know Katrina Cornwall. 

She wanted to have lunch. The only thing on the menu was my fucking dignity. 

“Hi,” she says as she enters the booth and orders a white wine. Now I know for sure I’ll be paying for this little meet and greet. The only time we ever go dutch is when she isn’t drinking.

“Why have I been summoned?” I ask her, shooting right to the point.  
“Sydney’s birthday is this spring,” she tells me like I don’t know. “My folks are putting on a little eighteenth celebration, a surprise. You’re welcome to come, I wanted to extend the invitation ahead of time.”

I grunt and order another drink.

“You could’ve texted that,” I comment. “Instead of dragging me halfway between here and there.”  
“I wanted to see you,” she tells me and I seen genuine concern in her eyes. “You’ve taken up smoking again.” 

“What of it? Didn’t you always say I was a better writer when I was drinking and smoking and on my way to Lung Cancer Creek just like my dad?”

“That’s low.” She points out and I shrug.  
“It’s nice here down at the bottom. You should try it sometime.”

“I worry about you, are you even writing anymore?” She asks me, her hands clasped together at the stem of her wine glass.

“Bits and pieces, nothing sticks.” I tell her.  
“You should come to the party, Gabe.” She says, reaching for my hands which I itch to tear away from her.

I try to keep the memory of her giving birth to Sydney at bay, how in that moment she looked like the most beautiful woman in the world to me. I imagine her swaddling Sydney is the most ridiculous clothes. Then I remember Sydney’s fucking Catholic baptism, I remember the way her father asked if Sydney should have my last name and I nearly decked him. I remember all the rich pricks she grew up with mocking me when they thought I couldn’t hear them.

I remember when Sicker Times was published, a character name Graham Witman eats a bullet in a grizzly way, dies a sick pathetic death, I got a lot of shit from Kat and her family for that. Mostly because Graham is her father’s name.

“It would mean a lot to Sydney,” she tells me, she finishes her drink and leaves. I crack my neck and order another drink. 

I try not to think of how sick it makes me that Kat would use Sydney’s birthday as another excuse to humiliate me. Maybe she is coming from a good place, but fuck her and the good place she came from. I was still mad.

I don’t know how in the hell Sydney came from the broken home she came from and still turned out to be the best thing I ever did. 

My phone vibrates in my pocket. A text from Michael and my heart races. It’s a picture of her ankle.

Just thought you should know it’s healing nicely.

I sigh deeply, it does look better. I type back:

Glad to hear it.

And the retreat is only three days away. I wonder if her ankle is healing, or she’s just trying to make me feel better. I remember the way I tried to be gentle and aware of said ankle when... yeah, it’s all coming back to me.


	3. Act Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something I wouldn't normally do...

“Alright, I hope you’re all prepared for the retreat coming up,” I say to the class of six as the hour comes to an end. “Pack warm but comfortable clothes and I don’t want to hear any moaning about your feet. You didn’t hear John Muir complaining about it.” The class chuckles at my vague reference, maybe they’re just humoring me. Frankly, I don’t give a damn.

The class begins to break up, of course Michael remains behind,

“You want to know what I thought of the last chapter?” I say and she nods, holding her notebook to her chest... I wonder what secrets those lined paper pages hold. “Excellent, the edits you’re making are bringing it together in some really special ways, Michael.”

Her chest rises and falls deeply, a relief. The fact that she still takes my opinion so deeply to heart moves me, in plenty of professional and unprofessional ways. 

“I’m so... Professor Lorca you have no idea how much this means to me.” She admits and I smile, waving my hand lightly in the air and gathering my meager things.

“You’re a good writer Michael. Although, I am curious how such a well-born, upper-class young woman such as yourself knows how to roll joints and cook meth.” She blushes and shrugs.

“The internet, honestly. I’m sure you can tell I don’t have any vices.” I take a candid step towards her. My hand goes to her shoulder,

“Not always a bad thing.” I release her quickly and she follows into the hall and towards the stairs. Male students are running up and down the stairs, half naked and painted in the school’s colors and yelling the school’s motto- preparing for the upcoming football game. I take her elbow and guide her towards me.

“I wish I did sometimes,” she suddenly says over the roar of youthful screaming. “Had vices, I mean. I don’t even lose my temper.”

“I suppose you’re what the kids these days call vanilla.” She nods, her eyes rolling a little.  
“That’s what my friend Tilly says,” she explains. “You should hear some of the suggestions she makes.”

I feel a flutter in my chest, my hand tightening on her elbow when I don’t remember giving it permission to do so,

“Like what?” I ask her, she stops and so do I, on the steps; clouds have begun to roll in and the stairway is darkened considerably for a few moments. It creates a queer sense of intimacy that wasn’t there before. 

“Like... to do something I wouldn’t normally do.” She says, avoiding details of descriptions of what it is that’s making her blush, whatever thoughts are swirling around in that imagination of hers are personal and for no one else but her... but I long to know them as well as she does.

“What wouldn’t you normally do, Michael?” I press, she seems to suddenly be aware of the hand on her, her chest is rising a little faster and her pupils are almost totally dilated. 

“I-”

“KINGSTON BEARS!” Michael is thrown into me and she yelps in pain as her ankle twists, I hold onto her tightly so she doesn’t go tumbling down the stairs, my other hand reaching for the railing. The young man apologizes over his shoulder before he continues to run half naked through the school, screaming and throwing confetti everywhere. I’ll report his behavior later, right now Michael is moaning in pain even through her thick knee highs I can her ankle is beginning to swell.

“Come on,” I help her to her feet and together we get to the bottom, thankfully we weren’t that far. In the office, after I’ve filed my complaint, Michael puts her phone down with tears in her eyes. The lightning and eventually thunder beckon the storm closer, and soon I can hear the sounds of fat rain pelting the roof.

“Do you have a way of getting home?” I ask her and she shrugs.  
“I’ll walk, I’ll be fine.” She assures me and I help her to her feet, I inform the nurse I’ll be driving her home but Michael protests. 

“Professor you don’t have to.” She tells me as I guide her outside, being sure to flip open the umbrella.

“I insist. You’ll never make it on that foot.” I say strongly, opening the passenger door for her and making sure to be careful of her ankle. As soon as the door shuts, I immediately regret my decision... god damn it.

The road is narrow, she lives off campus in an old multifamily house that’s been reduced to one to two bedroom apartments for students. 

“I bet this is a bitch to plow come winter,” I say and she nods.   
“I had to walk once, it was terrible. But hopefully we’ll have a late and short winter.” Says Michael, optimism in her voice. 

We both reach for the radio, our fingers brushing and I clear my throat. 

“I’m sorry-”  
“For what?” I ask but she doesn’t answer, the question lingering between us as it’s suddenly too hot and I can still feel the minute touch of her fingers against mine. The car goes over a pothole, the loud noise echoing in my ears as I try not to glance at her legs.

They’ve covered up to her knees in thick black high top stockings, it’s gotten cooler but she’s still wearing the dresses she favors so much. And for some reason the lack of flesh coupled with the tops of her revealed thighs is more alluring than if her legs were totally bare.

I can’t help it and in my mind I’m running my hands up her legs, her knees shaking and her breathing shallow when I reach the center of her-

“It’s the next left.” She tells me and I nod, keeping the image of her gasping for more to myself. 

The four way stop is a cluster-fuck and I’m stuck behind an SUV, the driver having no business driving something that tacky and large, and an over eager Prius behind me. Every Prius driver in my opinion drove like a fucking asshole with their brain backwards.

“Come on, how hard is a four way stop.” I mutter to myself. “No... no, don’t let him go- you fucker you were there first!” 

My temper is rising at the stupidity of the people around me. I got roped into this. It was either she walked home in the rain with a twisted ankle or I drove her... I got myself into this fucking mess and her legs still aren’t helping.

“It’s ok-”

I honk my horn and finally it’s my turn. 

“Fucking idiots.” I hear myself say, reaching into my pocket for my cigarettes. I notice Michael gives me the same look Sydney would if she saw that I was smoking again. “Apologies for my road rage.”

“Do you smoke?” I ask her, offering her the pack. She shakes her head.  
“No, remember, I have no vices. I didn’t know you did.”  
“Good, that’s what I aim for.”

She picks up the pack; Camel, Turkish Blend. The red and cold pack is turned over in her hands. She sniffs them.

“They smell like vanilla.” She comments, putting them in the drink console between us.  
“Taste like it too.” I mention and I look at her and for the briefest moments she bites her bottom lip and I swear she clenches her thighs. 

The sun is setting faster and faster, I keep my eyes on the road but in my mind she’s underneath me, gasping and begging for me to touch her. In my mind I kiss her between her legs and send her into ecstasy, she resists at first, telling me no one has kissed her there but she gives in and she enjoys it and soon she’s craving it.

I’m already hard... hopefully her apartment is a little further so it has time to-

“Right here.” she says, almost too quickly, pointing at a white building.   
I pull into the parking lot, adjusting my coat so she doesn’t see the obvious erection I’m sporting. 

She reaches down, grasping her messenger bag and looking at her ankle.

“How is it?” I ask, unbuckling myself.   
“The swelling’s gone down.” She tells me and she leans back and I realize I’m too close to her.

“Let me check.” I say softly even as I tell myself I shouldn’t. She leans further into her seat, still connected by the belt holding her place. I reach down and feel the swollen ankle, she was lying, I knew it. She gasps when my fingertips touch the bone and I feel a pang of guilt, because I’m pretending she’s doing it for another reason and not because she’s in pain.

“Needs some ice.” I tell her, straightening to face her, at some point she leaned forward. 

I clear my throat again.

“Is there an elevator?” I ask her and her soft laughter fills the car.   
“No. I’ll be fine.”   
“Michael...”  
“Really it’s just a couple of flights.” I groan and shake my head.

“That’s it.”

On our way up, with her in my arms light as a damn feather like I knew she would be, I ask her if she has a roommate. She does, but she’s gone home because her aunt is sick.

“Why didn’t that boyfriend of yours help you home?” I ask her, I can’t help myself, and I refuse to say his name.

“He was working and couldn’t leave. I understand, it’s hard when it’s not an actual emergency.” She explains, making excuses for- for him.

“You couldn’t get home and would’ve broken your neck on these stairs. I call that an emergency.” I mumbled, I’m careful not to bash her head into anything. We reach the top and I’m a little winded, not as young as I used to be, and itching for a cigarette. She gets out her keys and with my hand on her back she limps to her door. 

For a moment I’m afraid a student will come out of nowhere and recognize me, then I realize I’m inside her small living space with no memory of how I got in there. Did she invite me in and in my lustful haze did I accept? She’s removing her coat and I help her to the sofa.

She directs me to the kitchen and I fill a plastic bag with ice and cold water. I’m kneeling at her feet, rolling down her thick sock without asking her... finally touching her. With her distracted, eyes closed to hide from the pain, I glance towards a door with an M painted into it... it’s darkened, I can’t see much except for the corner of a double bed and a desk chair. 

I lay the ice bag on her swollen ankle, she hisses for a moment then relaxes against the old hand me down sofa. I look around her apartment again. It’s a shoebox, god knows how two women occupy such a small space. But I remember those days.

“This should help,” I tell her, the awkward tension has returned. The room feels like it’s on fire.  
“Thank you,” she says quietly.   
“You’re welcome. Are you looking forward to the retreat?” 

She’s saying something but all I can imagine is pinning her down onto the couch and forcing my cock inside her, she’ll be begging for it, needing it to fill her. She’s ripping holes into my shirt with her nails, she’s crying, she’s in pain, she wants it...

“Professor?” She gets my attention once again and I look up at her. Her hand is on my shoulder, her legs have spread a little bit more, her sweet cunt is within reach and at fucking eye level. I’m at a loss for words for the first time in my life. 

“Michael I-” I’m trying to find the words and trying to find the will to stand when she takes my face and presses her mouth to mine. It’s clumsy and light, but it’s everything. She hesitantly parts her lips, I feel her tongue at the seam of my lips trying to convince me to kiss her back. 

The softest brush of her tongue and I’m pushing towards her, into her hemisphere. 

To do something I wouldn’t normally do...

“Michael...” I whisper her name before she kisses me again, dragging me closer to her, until her legs are shyly wrapping around my torso because I’m still on my knees in front of her. I’m breaking, my resolve is crumbling. I tried to be a good man for Kat but I was a lousy husband. I know I’m a good father, however absent I am. 

Maybe this is just part of my own downfall, maybe it was inevitable. Maybe I just needed Michael to lead me down the path towards being the ultimate cliche.

I’m rougher than I mean to be when I lean into her more fully, she’s lying back and I’m careful not to injure her further. 

Her legs are around me and I press my erection into the warmth of her center and she’s shaking all over. I keep kissing her, trying to be gentle. When I move my hand up her stomach she freezes like an animal caught in a cage. 

“Wait.” She says, she’s pushing at my chest and for a moment I don’t move and I know that frightens her more than anything. “It’s... I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

“It’s ok.” I say, lifting myself over her.   
“Professor Lorca I-” I stop her again, pressing a fingertip to her lips. 

“This was a mistake, I’m.... I’m the one who should be sorry.” I explain to her. “This isn’t about you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Jesus Christ, what kind of a man was I? If I found out one of Sydney’s professors did something like this to her I’d kill him. Make them disappear good and proper. I still know people who could help me.

“I... I just didn’t want you to think badly of me.” She says, her eyes downcast and I shake my head. 

“I don’t, Michael. But I think it’s best maybe we don’t see each other outside of class anymore.”

She nods but I see her trying not to cry. 

“I... I ruined everything.” She mumbles and I take her hand.   
“No, you didn’t. You know it’s not appropriate and I would be a pretty big bastard if I let this go on. You did the right thing, stopping.”

Michael then looks at me, the tears haven’t fallen yet but if she blinks they will.

“Would you have?” She asks me and instead of answering I release her hand and finally put some distance between us.

“I’ll see you Friday, for the retreat.” Is all I say before I leave.


	4. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Men have crushes too.

I didn’t stop jerking off to her, that’s when I knew I had a problem. And when she forgot her coveted notebook one day after class... well, I’m shitty person and couldn’t help myself. Actually, that’s not true. I could’ve returned it, I could’ve not opened it. I expected to find notes on class, outlines, story ideas, character bios... shit even fucking doodles. I didn’t know it was her diary. Generally speaking- and this isn’t me being sexist- a woman’s diary is fairly obvious. Designers do that on purpose. But Michael simply used a standard black and white notebook as her diary. 

It was such an invasion of privacy, I felt butterflies in my gut, even in the locked solitude of my office I felt like I was being watched. But that’s what guilt and fear do to a person. She didn’t leave dates of when she wrote, but references to certain activities that happened at the school help me pinpoint when the entry could’ve been taking place.

THIS BELONGS TO: Michael Burnham,

Ash and I were supposed to have dinner tonight; I even bought a new dress. But he picked up a shift, same old excuse- that the money will help when I graduate and we can find our own place together. I know he’s not wrong, but it feels wrong. We’ve been dating a year and he’s been so patient with me that sometimes it makes me feel terrible. It’s not that I don’t want to have sex with him it’s-

I close the book. Shit. I take a couple of deep breaths. Stay or gone, coming or going... I light up a cigarette, crack the window and turn off the smoke detector. I take my place back at the desk and reopen the notebook-

-it’s that I don’t know when I’ll want to. Sometimes when we kiss it feels good but nothing happens. I don’t get aroused and then other times I do. He doesn’t seem to mind waiting but then I worry he doesn’t mind because he’s sleeping with someone else... or am I just being paranoid? But then why keep seeing me? I don’t want him to pressure me into having sex but shouldn’t he be trying harder to get into my pants? Tilly says he’s just a nice guy- and he is- I love him. But there’s something about him seems entirely hidden from me. He says I know him better than anyone, but the feeling in my gut tells me I don’t.

I turn the page, not entirely unhappy that there was trouble in paradise.

The retreat is a few weeks away, Professor Lorca says it will be good for the soul, but he said it in that usual sardonic tone of his. Which I like... I love his voice, it changes the atmosphere in the room. He challenges me, encourages me and isn’t afraid to critique my work. Ash loves everything I write so I never know when something is genuinely good or really bad. But with Professor Lorca he’ll be honest. Have to dash, classes start soon.

I’m hesitant to write this next part- Tilly says I have a crush on Professor Lorca. That I’m always talking about him. It’s just that he’s different from the other teachers. And his book found me when I needed it most, Sicker Times literally inspired me to come here when dad wanted me to go to the other side of the country. Professor Lorca is definitely handsome but I doubt he even thinks of me in that way. I won’t deny I think of him in different ways... like when I’m in the shower or when I have the bed to myself and Ash isn’t around. I feel badly when I think of him then. It comes out of nowhere. In class I daydream about him too, when he’s talking... gesturing with his hands that are so different from Ash’s. 

Another exhausting day. It feels good to write about these things, I always feel better after I’ve vented to the page, then I can work on my manuscript. I have another confession: I shamelessly stared at Professor’s Lorca’s bulge today-

Holy shit.

-I mean, it’s just fantasy, it can’t hurt anyone. Actually, that’s not true. It could hurt a lot of people. Even if it’s just a silly crush. But I couldn’t seem to help myself, I was overcome with this urge suddenly in the middle of class. I was so turned on I hope no one noticed I was rubbing my thighs together. It felt so wrong... so utterly base and terrible. But it was like what Tilly said to me once, that I need to think outside the box. That I need to try things I wouldn’t normally try. Trying to relief my arousal in class is not what she had in mind, I know, but... it felt so good. 

I’m starting to fantasise about Professor Lorca more often, even when I’m kissing Ash. When he humps against me I close my eyes and pretend I’m somewhere else. The other night I masturbated thinking about him touching me... I imagine him holding me down, forcing me to take his co- his manhood into myself, making me watch, he’ll put a hand over my mouth to keep me quiet, he’ll whisper sexual things into my ear as he forces me to orgasm against my will. I want his hands on me, touching me, making me feel things I never have before. 

I feel so awful that I wrote these things. I feel terrible, guilty. I feel like I’m being dishonest to Ash in someway. I don’t know how or why and none of this makes sense. It’s just a crush... nothing more. But now it’s bleeding into every part of my life, I can’t stop thinking about him. Sometimes when we’re doing a writing assignment or challenge in class I look at him when he doesn’t think I’m looking. He looks so sad, lonely... his eyes always look so glassy in those moments, like he’s watching a movie reel of some far away memory. I just want him to be happy.

I finally close the book, rush back to the classroom and put it back where I found it. It was enough. Just the fanciful scribblings of a young woman with a crush.


	5. Act One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trouble begins.

I read some of her work, it’s good. It’s actually good. It’s not the same superimposed oh woe is me crap that I get from her generation on a weekly basis. It’s powerful and visceral. I let her know that I’ve read it, that I was moved by it and I encourage her to keep writing. I want her to write for me, but that’s an asinine thought. Because it’s not for me. She should write for herself. 

“You didn’t think it was too much, at the end?” she asks me after class, I shake my head.  
“On the contrary. I think your use of violence was necessary for Clayton to understand how badly he fucked up.” I say to her and she smiles, a refreshing and beautiful thing.

No. I can’t find her beautiful because that’s wrong, inappropriate and... I still am. I’m admiring her beauty for the first time. I’m taking in her long legs under her dress, her hair, her eyes. Even her fucking teeth. 

“I wasn’t sure it was a misuse of violence,” she says.  
“But if it’s something he would naturally do in the environment he was raised it then it makes sense. He murdered Joe to prove a point, but only proved the point of what everyone else was already telling him. I think it was more nuanced than you’re willing to give yourself credit for.”

She blushes and hides her eyes, I want to touch her suddenly. We’re alone, no one’s around. Get a grip, old man!

“Thank you, Professor Lorca, I really appreciate it.” She says like a fan. I wonder if she has read my book, my deflated ego could use a boost. 

“It’s my pleasure, please keep writing.” I say and together we make our way towards the door, bumping into one another as we leave.

Michael does indeed keep writing and she continues to give me pages of her book, it’s untitled for now. But it tells the story of a roughneck named Clayton Bass, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks that’s been told his whole life he was a worthless good for nothing low life. He tries to better himself but he keeps running into roadblocks, he keeps getting beaten down until he can’t take it anymore and snaps.

The end nearly had a grown man in tears, said grown man being myself. When Clayton’s ultimate end does come I feel sorry for him. There’s no happy ending. The guy doesn’t get the girl, in fact she runs off with someone who will be good to her, whose better than Clayton. 

In the end, Clayton gives himself over the dark side and falls so far from heaven there’s no chance at redemption. 

It was powerful, riveting and the most compelling thing I had ever read from a student. 

“I think you should work on a second draft,” I tell her after class one day. “The first is great, but it does lag towards the second act and then there’s this great confrontation in the third that comes out of nowhere. You need to lead into it a bit more.”

She nods, listening and hanging onto every word I say. I wish she didn’t look at me like an adoring fan, but it’s different with Michael. For some reason it means more.

My phone vibrates as we talk, it’s Sydney.

“Sorry, one second.” I say to Michael and she nods. “Hey firecracker.” I answer the phone.  
“Hey dad, did mom call you yet?” Sydney asks, it sounds like she’s jogging.  
“No, should I expect to be summoned?” I ask her and I offer Michael a sorry and she nods understandingly.

“Yeah. Something about some party grandpa wants to throw for me, they think I don’t know it’s a surprise.” She giggles, she somehow managed to get someone to spill the beans.

“How is the old fart?” I ask her and she laughs again, she’s breathing deep.  
“Farty,” she answers, panting. “Sorry, I’m trying to shave some time off my runs.”  
“How’s the knee?”  
“Shitty but ya know.” 

I laugh at her sense of humor, dry and cut throat like mine. Michael smiles awkwardly at me, for the first time in my life I rush my daughter off the phone. I only feel bad about it later.

“Okay, firecracker, I’ll keep my head down in case she calls. Love you.”   
“Love you too.”

I hang up and continue walking with Michael. 

“Sorry, that was my daughter,” I tell her.  
“I didn’t know you were married.” She says, is that strain in her voice?  
“Divorced, four years.”  
“I’m sorry.” She offers and I shake my head.

“Don’t be, I’m not the marrying kind.”

The silence that follows is comfortable despite the fact I’ve just shared something very personal with a student and I never have before. We walk to the campus cafe, she has time between classes and before my dreaded office hours.

“Where did you get inspired to write your book?” She asks me over her steaming latte.  
“The exact location? The shower.” She laughs and I shake my head. “I’m serious. The bathroom is a holy, sacred place for writers.” 

She leans closer, blowing the steam off her latte, as if she knows a secret.

“I will admit that when I’m brushing my teeth ideas kind of just... pop.”   
“Pop?” I parrot and she nods.  
“You know, like thunder. Somehow they just roll in.” 

I like Michael, I like the way she talks, I like the way she dresses. I like her... in more ways than I’d care to admit. In ways I’ve never liked a student before. In ways I like a woman I’m on a date with, not a student I’m offering council to. 

“Do you still write?” She asks me, hesitation in her voice. I shrug.  
“Every now and then, nothing sticks.” It’s my usual answer I give to most people who ask me this question. I lost interest in my own writing a long time ago. Somehow nobody else has, in a way that makes me lucky. 

“Can I ask a personal question?” She asks and I give her permission. “How much of your own life is in your books?”

I hesitate before I answer. Pretty much all of it, I want to say. I want to tell her I burned more bridges than I can count with my pen than I ever did when I was overseas with a gun. I feel like I can tell Michael these things. 

“Too much sometimes,” I find myself divulging to her. “My marriage, my experience as a soldier and more so as a veteran. My failures as a husband, as a son. Someone once told me, write what you know. Well I did and I became a successful novelist and a piece of shit all at once.” 

Michael bravely reaches across the table and touches my hand.

“I don’t think you’re a bad man.” She says sweetly and I smile, she won’t even repeat “piece of shit” because she’s too good for that- not in a negative way either. She simply is too good.

I feel the heat igniting in my palm and traveling up my arm, it’s tendrils wrapping themselves around me like a cobra. 

The door swings open, a young man approaches our table and she slides her hand subtly away from mine.

“Hey babe,” the man says and I feel a swell of sudden embarrassment followed by anger. 

Michael isn’t someone to be called “babe,” I hear myself think. She rises and kisses him on the cheek.

“I thought you were working all day,” she says and I feel forgotten.  
“I switched shifts. You got time for a latte with your boyfriend?” He asks and she nods happily.

I want to interrupt with some bitchy quip like, she’s already got one. 

“Oh, sorry. Ash, this is Professor Lorca. This is my boyfriend, Ash Tyler.”  
“I’ve heard a lot about you, professor.” Ash says kindly but it feels rude, it feels like something Kat’s father said to me when I first met him. 

Ash Tyler... in his shitty suit from Men’s Wearhouse- his stupid tie, from Douchebags R Us. Where does he work, Fuckwits Anonymous?

I rise to my full height, we’re eye to eye. I shake his hand. I wish he was shorter but he’s not, I wish he wasn’t so damn charming looking and nice to look at; the type I’m Michael’s mother was relieved to meet. I’ve never been the type mothers liked meeting. 

“Pleasure. I should be going. Nice to meet you.” I say, quickly leaving the happy couple behind. When I get to my office I tear off my scarf and collapse into my desk, I swivel my chair towards the window, cracking it and lighting up a cigarette. 

I’m caught in my own personal paradox; I have no right to be angry or jealous right now. She’s off limits anyway, the epitome of the forbidden fruit complex. And the way she touched my hand did more harm than good. I’m both bitter towards her and hateful towards her boyfriend. Ash Tyler... Ash-fucking-Tyler. What a pretentious name. What a shitty monocure. What a oafish face he has. 

I slide myself back to my desk, tapping ash- fuck me- into the tray. Ash... I write a short story about ash, how pathetic and useless it is, how it’s the dead remnants of something that ultimately kills us. Then I highlight everything and erase it. 

I keep reminding myself I have no right to be jealous or angry at either of them. Especially Michael... she’s not mine, never would or could be. But I feel the infatuation growing. Her admiring spirit, her smile... 

I lean back, exhaling and thankful I turned off the smoke detector before lighting up. I close my eyes and I see her at the cafe... then I see her elsewhere. In my office, leaning over the pages of her unfinished, untitled manuscript, covered in red ink from my edits. I’ll be next to her, she’ll get frustrated with herself and I’ll calm her by rubbing my hand at her back.

Michael leans into my touch, her side pressing into my torso, her small breast smashing against my chest. Her ass against my thigh. I slide my hands down her sides, the air in the room changing, the smell of her intoxicating me. Her innocent hand falling to mine on the desk, running her fingertips over the back of it before sliding her fingers between mine. 

She’ll breathe heavier, so will I. I’ll smell the faint perfume coupled with her natural scent at her, my lips lightly brushing her ear as I whisper it’s alright, she’ll get there, she’ll find her inspiration.   
The fingertips at my are a stark contrast to us both; light and dark, older and younger. May December in a push and pull moment where one of us has to decide this is a bad idea, one of us has to vocalize it. Instead she’ll lean further into my body, sighing as my mouth finally lands on her shoulder, over her fabric of her light blue dress... she shyly move her ass against my thigh indicating her interest, her desire to continue, her yearning for more. 

I turn her around, her backside firmly set into the wood behind her and I waste no time in kissing her deeply and thoroughly, all against my better judgment. She’ll be timid, she’ll be curious as her hands move up my chest to wrap her arms around my neck as I bend her backwards. 

My hands find the ties that hold her dress in place at her waist, quickly untying them in my fevered haze to see her, to have her. It’s my fantasy so she offers up no resistance to my searching rough hands as they map her perfect body, learning the topography of it inch by soft inch.

I turn her around again, pushing her hips into the solid desk as I tear her panties from her body. She cries out when I push my erection against her, the rough friction of my jeans against her swollen and sensitive cunt scares and excites her. I can feel how wet she would be, dripping hot wetness from her center. I free myself from my jeans to fuck her from behind.

She’d cry out at my aggressive intrusion into her young body. I’ll give her no time to adjust, in fact my thrusts are powerful and shake the contents on the desk. I’ll tell her to take it, to be quiet, to enjoy it and to be a good girl.

Michael does enjoy it. She moves with me, pressing her ass into my crotch as I fuck her hard. Her supple ass bouncing off me, my balls slapping into her cunt, forcing her to feel every inch of my cock. 

I’m glad I locked my office door, I’m hard in my own hand, lost in the fantasy of Michael Burnham. I have a tissue ready when I cum, spilling myself into the soft material and groaning low in case there’s a student who wants to annoy me today. 

I’ve broken so many of my own moral codes just by jerking off to her. 

Yet in the aftermath of the fantasy I don’t feel guilty and I don’t regret it and for some reason that’s worse. What does that make me? I’ve never crossed a boundary like this before... 

Ellen was different. I never acted on those feelings, I never gave in however easy it would’ve been. The attraction was there, despite it only being physical. We were too different to have ever been compatible. In the end it still helped put the final nail in the coffin of my marriage.

I used it as an excuse to force Kat to leave me. I admitted to her, over a dinner of cold mushroom soup while Sydney was away at a friend’s house, that I had thought about sleeping with Ellen, the woman who taught self defense classes on campus. Kat accused me of already sleeping with her, that I was just trying to admit to it without actually confessing. 

The divorce papers were served not long after that and in the privacy of my office at the school, I breathed a sigh of relief. What a petty coward I was.

And here I am again, being cowardly. Masturbating to the fantasy of Michael Burnham who didn’t deserve to be the paramour of my perverted daydream. 

Local Man Jerks Off to Student, Remembers Why He’s Alone.

I clean up and clear up any traces of my indignity. What a shallow, sorry excuse for a role model I had become. When she looks at me with those trusting orbs, utters those words of praise, I fall deeper into my own personal hell. If only she knew the truth... I’m taken further back, the first time I saw her in the lecture hall. I was in a similar place I am now, but worse...


	6. Act One: On the Nature of Daylight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Best read while listening to On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter.

I felt like a cheap trick. 

Come and see the wonders of bullshit incarnate! 

Local Man Thinks He Can Teach A Younger Generation How To Bullshit Their Way Through Writing...

Ain’t that the truth, I berates my own work because god knows everyone else is afraid to give an honest fucking opinion.

I was tired of being coddled and told how great I was because of what he’d been before he was a professor. Did they even give him the job because they thought he was the best choice? 

Let’s give him the job because he’s fought for our country, nearly died in the process, comes home to a country eating itself from the inside out, writes a successful novel everyone loves, has no follow-up but we feel bad for him...

Kat called it Imposter Syndrome. That because I doubted the sincerity of everyone around me I’d never allow myself to appreciate my own work for what it was: simply good. 

The New York Times had called “the most astounding book of the generation”. The Post said it would “change the world”. I didn’t see any change. I still saw the same shitty place and the same shitty people. Alt-left or right, I didn’t see poised and profound thinkers of a new generation. I saw spoiled brats on both sides of the isle, whining and complaining about how the world wasn’t fair.

The world is not a safe space, it’s not a bubble. Things get inside; bad, dark insidious things you have no control over. The bad people are everywhere, you can’t always tell them apart. Not everyone walks around with their fucking life on their face. 

And every new term, I was forced to endure them a new lot of them. 

Kat always said I was too hard on them, maybe I was. Or maybe I just didn’t a shit anymore. 

I could use another cigarette before class begins but I deny myself that too. They’ll be here any minute. I plug in my headphones, finding something to help ease the anxiety I always feel before the first class begins. 

On the Nature of Daylight begins slowly, the cellos and string section the beginning to instantaneous sadness that will continue to build as the piece progresses. I see my dad’s hands... the way they bent in horrid directions, he lies in his hospital bed prone and vulnerable, unable to speak because of the tubes shoved down his throat. 

I take his hand, my star of David intertwined in my fingers. Tears spill from his eyes, he had wished for better from himself as a father and from me as a son. 

A grown man doesn’t cry, he had once said to me when I was fifteen. He had hit me, he had yelled. He had hated and loved me more than anyone. He didn’t come to my wedding, he didn’t come to Sydney’s baptism. I didn’t go to his fiftieth birthday, or his big bowling league game mom was so excited for. I insisted they move to Florida, finally putting the last wedge between us. I joked I hoped he got eaten by an alligator. 

Then the call came from mom.

Dad’s sick. 

With those two words I had never booked a flight faster in my life. Two weeks later, here we are. The cancer had already spread to every possible vital organ you can imagine. I remember the smell of cigarettes when I was a boy, sitting on his work table as he carved something with those war beaten hands, hands that caused some harm made something so beautiful.

Don’t ever go to war, Gabe. Man shouldn’t kill his brother, he told me. And I did anyway. 

I remember him showing me pictures of my grandparents, wrists tattooed, holding their golden stars in the little jewelry shop they opened and nearly lost; a monument to their own personal survival. 

I see my mother lying bloodied on the kitchen floor, what would’ve been my baby sister aborting herself before she had time to take her first breath. My hands covered in her blood, her viscera, trying to call an ambulance with my shaking adolescent hands. My weak, weak hands. 

They put my baby sister in the ground so quickly I didn’t have time to mourn her. Two years later my parents had finally given her name... it took years of silence in a house normally filled with such beautiful laughter to put an end to the grief. But I never forgot the pain on my mother’s face, the tears my father hid. The sounds of yelling, blame being cast to each person in his line of sight. 

And eventually, the blame he put on himself, but took out on myself. 

The last moment of his life is tattooed in my soul forever. I see every night before I go to sleep, every morning when I wake. I see in my reflection as the years pass over me in waves, drowning me in the shadow of my father. 

The moment is broken, the door opens and closed and in the shadow gleam of sparse light a figure appears. For a moment, wrapped in the melody and the memory, I fear I’ve passed out. That this is some strange mirage of a woman coming towards me. Perhaps Death would be a woman. 

But it’s not, it’s real as her lips move and her face comes into focus. 

A dark skinned young woman, a student, with her messenger, silly summer dress and plain white shoes. 

I remove the earbuds, the music now a distant high pitch noise. 

“What?” I snap at her, irritated I’ve been removed from my own self pity and despair.   
“Oh- I’m... I’m sorry. This is English Lit. with Professor Lorca, is it not?” 

I groan and look at the clock. She’s ten minutes early. I rise and place with little care the plastic buds into my desk drawer. 

“It used to be.” I grumble.  
“Do I have the wrong room?”  
“Sadly, you don’t.”

There’s a pause as I crack my neck and turn the lights up to maximum. She’s... very young, maybe nineteen years old, maybe a youthful twenty. 

Then again, anything was youthful standing next to me.

“I’m sorry if I interrupted something,” she offers politely and I wave my hand.  
“It was nothing, just... a little morning ruminating.” I assure her, attempting to be polite but I know it came across curt. 

“Do you mind if...” she gestures to the seats around her and I nod.  
“Please, take your pick Miss....?”  
“Burnham, Michael Burnham, sir.” She says and she extends her hand, I shake it. She has a decent grip. I didn’t think anyone in her generation knew how to shake hands anymore. There was a subtle art to it. 

Michael Burnham takes her seat, organizing her small work station with a notebook and computer. 

“Are you always this punctual?” I ask her and she nods, as if she’s proud.  
“I don’t see any reason to not be at least ten minutes early to anything.” She informs me and I chuckle.

“There’s a fine logic to that, Miss. Burnham. However you don’t want to come across as being aggressive.” I tell her and she frowns.

“Aggressive? Not prepared?”   
“I get the impression you like being prepared.” I say, leaning back against the long desk, made of faux wood with a plastic black trim.

“For everything.” She says, shoulders and back straight.  
“But you must know it is impossible to be prepared for everything.” I say. She shrugs.  
“All I can do is try.” And for some reason the dower mood I had found myself in this morning dissipates like a shallow storm, petering out of existence. 

“Quite right, Miss. Burnham, quite right.” I say.  
“You can call me, Michael.” She says, facing her computer screen but her eyes flicking to mine for a moment... I recall shaking her hand, the feel of her skin then it disappears as students begin entering the classroom. 

The white noise of their arrival hushes all other thought from my mind and I prepare myself for the rest of the hour and a half long class. The class thins out over the course of the next few days, students deciding to either drop the course all together or some who just don’t show up.

But every class, in the same seat, ten minutes early every time without fail, Michael Burnham shows up, greets me with a smile and takes her seat. She sees no point in taking part in small talk and neither do I. Very quickly we enter into a routine, we know each other in a silent and mutual way the others don’t. 

The months go by, the semester comes to an end. I visit Sydney or she comes to see me and she tells me all about her classes how excited she is. It’s no surprise she makes honor roll, it’s no surprise she makes me proud. 

When the second semester and the second half of my class begins weeks later, Michael Burnham is there in the front row at her usual seat. With her she’s brought a manila envelope. Inside is chapter one of her untitled manuscript. She asks me to read it. 

I accept it. 

What harm could it do?


	7. Act Three: The Whims of Kronos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kronos: the god of time. 
> 
> The end is where we began.

Spring break was nearly here, thank god whoever invented such a thing. I sit at my computer at home going over the final draft submissions by the students. A little end of the term contest for them to sink their soft teeth into. All of the submissions were ready to be torn apart by my red pen. All except one...

There had been a family emergency, the school had granted Michael a leave of absence, she still participated online and submitted little trifles that were clearly beneath here and there. But she did not enter the contest when I emailed her the instructions, she didn’t respond. I suggested she submit her untitled story, but there was no response. I don’t what I was expecting; even if the email was “fuck off” then at least it was a response. 

But things couldn’t go back to the way they were. Had they even started off the way they should have? What if she hadn’t shown up ten minutes early, what if I had been ten minutes late? What if I never agreed to teach last year? The whole year in a nutshell was whirlwind, as cliche as it sounds.

And as terrible as this makes me seem, it made my fingers touch the keys and begin writing again. Of course it was based in fiction, inspired by truth. No one knew of what had transpired between Michael and I, that much I was sure of. 

The story was set in the 60’s, the backdrop of Vietnam. A seasoned soldier returns with a purple heart and not much else. Comes home expecting to find his wife waiting for him, instead she divorces him. He wanders from place to place, looking for a reason to live when he meets a young nurse. He finds work as a mechanic, and... well, things go from there.

She tries to save him- I don’t know how it will end. I have a few ideas. Most of them end with a suicide or some other calamity that befalls my protagonist. I was brushing my teeth when the story began to take shape, it popped as Michael had once described it. 

I was just finishing a rather profound piece of shit story about a man who awakens one day to find it’s been turned into a dog when I decide to call it quits for the night. I flick off the light and make my way to my car. 

It’s warm and humid outside, reminding me of Michael. Most things do. I haven’t tried to contact her outside of what was professional, despite wanting to know how she was. I didn’t have the right to know, it wasn’t my place. I wasn’t anything to her. I was her professor who took advantage of her.

I deeply suspected her leave of absence had more to do with my distasteful actions than a family emergency. It was a likely story I suppose. A few days had turned into weeks, then a whole month had passed and the empty space in the front row, regularly up to that point occupied by Michael, taunted me. 

I drove her away. During my drive between Self Pity St. and I Miss Michael Lane, Sydney calls,

“Hey firecracker,” I answer and I can hear her smile.  
“So, now or never. Are you RSVPing or not?” I groan and crack the window, letting my fingers glide through the air.

“Do I have to?”  
“Only if you want to continue to have a relationship with one Sydney Buran Lorca.”   
“You’re a sadist,” I grumble and she giggles, I hear her flop down onto her bed.  
“Please, daddy, I only turn eighteen once.” She says, guilting me with her little girl’s voice that takes me back to when I almost caved and bought her a pony.

“Is Tinker dead yet?” I ask her and she gasps.  
“No, she’s right here. She says, oh, what was that Tinker? She says, tell that old grump to put his big girl pants on and see his daughter.” 

I sigh, lifting a cigarette to my lips.

“Alright, fine. When I get home I’ll send the damn RSVP. Happy?”   
“Woohoo!” I have to move the phone away from my ear she’s so elated. “You have no idea how much this means to me!”

“My eardrums do.” I mutter.  
“I’m gonna go tell mom, oh this is so great! There’s someone I want you to meet too.”  
“Yeah? That meathead boyfriend of yours?” I say and I laugh at my own joke.  
“No, dad, Ben and I broke up. He was pressuring me to do drugs so I dumped him.”  
“Smart girl.” 

There’s a pause and I hear voices, her mother must be saying something.

“So who do you want me to meet?” Trying to keep her on the phone before Kat manipulates her into hanging up.

“Oh, it’s a neighbor, they just moved in across the street. Kind of weird but nice. Their daughter kind has been mentoring me with my running.”

“You need a mentor for that?” I ask and instead of a smile I can picture her rolling her eyes.  
“Dad, all athletes need mentors. She’s really nice, she’s a writer too.”  
“What’s her name?”  
“Michael Burnham.”

I drop my cigarette in my lap, burning the shit out of my thigh and I swerve in my haste and slam on the break.

“Daddy?” Sydney’s voice is coming from the floor, I dropped the phone too. I slap the ash off my legs and find the damn cigarette before tossing it out the window.

“I’m here, firecracker,”  
“What the hell was that? Are you okay?”  
“A... it was a fucking deer. I gotta check the car, I’ll see you next week. Love you.”  
“Love you-”

I hang up, pull off to the side and put on my hazards. My hands are shaking, my stomach is twisting in knots. It’s a combination of factors that has been in a cold sweat. The near death experience coupled with the fact that Michael Burnham was living across the street from my ex-wife and daughter and would be at her birthday party had me wanting to vomit. 

Did Michael know? Kat had never taken my last name, but Sydney had mine. If I had been anxious about seeing Kat, her rich prick friends and my former in laws well... this just added a whole new layer of anxiety inducing shit.

And before I knew, with the submissions graded, a winner chosen, I’m standing outside of my ex-wife’s home with a simple gift for my daughter, attempting not to seem nervous. Because to everyone else I’ve never met Michael Burnham before. Or at least if Sydney is aware of my professional relationship with Michael she’ll expect it to be just that, professional... despite it being anything but from the very beginning.

Kat answers the door, drink in hand, smiling and waving me inside. Time to be cordial and polite and not insult any of her friends... at least for the first hour. 

“Hey Gabe,” Kat says kissing me on the cheek, I return the gesture, it’s our way now.   
“Dad!” Sydney runs down the stairs, lanky limbed and tall, her short hair bouncing off her hairs.

“Hey firecracker,” I say, wrapping my arms around her thin athlete’s frame. I inhale her scent, the scent beneath the perfume and the powdery makeup. It takes me eighteen years back in time, when she was eight pound nine ounces of fat baby flesh and an endless supply of shit, devouring everything in sight and sticking her tiny fingers up my nose.

“Why did you ever start calling her that?” Kat says, taking the gift and placing it with the others.  
“I suppose you’ve forgotten the incident with said firecrackers.”  
“Fourth of July, now I remember.” 

Sydney shrugs, the memory vivid in her mind.

“I wanted to protect my country, just like dad.” I’m almost enjoying myself, then Graham, my former father in law, rears his pointy wasp head; appearing like a goddamn ghost, right out of thin air. 

I remember being angry at my own dad when he said once describing Graham, “it looks like the forceps got stuck to his head.” I had been angry at him because I had wanted Graham to like me, now I look back and think how right my dad had been.

“Gabe,” Graham says, extending his thin hand, I shake it and I hate the loose grip. Can’t even shake hands like a man. Fucking draft dodger.

“Graham.” I say, forcing the politeness out of me like shit through a goose.  
“How’s the new book coming?” I shoot him a look of surprise. “Oh, Sydney told us you were working again.”

“I’ve always been working, Graham. It’s the writing that took a break.” I remind him, remembering why I should’ve stayed home. When would the old bastard drop dead? 

“Well, what’s it about?” 

I wish I had a drink and a place to smoke, but these carping vultures won’t move out of the way.

“Murder.” I say with a smile and Graham’s falls, he remembers when I murdered him the first time in a book, nearly pressed charges though he had nothing to go on. My excuse was, a lot of people named Graham get shot three times in the face. 

“Come on, dad, I want you to meet some friends.” Sydney says, pulling me deeper into the house on haunted hill. At one point Kat introduces her boyfriend, Mr. Stupid British Face, I forget his name the moment he says it. Then there’s Sydney’s circle of friends, young and athletic like herself.

I’m keenly aware of the voices around me, keeping tabs on all of them, keeping my ears open for Michael’s laugh or her voice. 

I don’t hear it, maybe she’s not coming. I don’t bring it up, I’d rather be a masochist and leave the suspense to kill me slowly and softly. 

One hour turns into two, I’m stuck with two of Kat’s college friends. Hugh Culbar and Paul Stamets. I never liked Stamets, Hugh was cool he was the least snobbish out of all of them and the only one I found myself relating to even the slightest.

“Oh, Sydney they’re here.” Kat’s voice rings out at one point. I ignore it, looking at my watch, counting down the hours until it’s an appropriate time to leave. Of course I feel terrible thinking that because it’s my daughter’s damn birthday party. 

I realize no one had yelled surprise, Sydney must have made them aware she was in on what they were doing. That’s my girl. Don’t let anyone surprise you, you’ll only be disappointed. Maybe she worried if it stayed a surprise I wouldn’t come.

“Dad,” I turn at the sound of Sydney’s voice and I have to stop myself from dropping my beer because Michael is standing there with her parents and my stomach and brain have disappeared, leaving only my heart to race like Secretariat. 

“This is Michael Burnham and her parents Amanda and Sarek.” Sydney says, holding my finger the way she did when she was a child and dragging me towards the gates of hell, guarded by the waspy figures of Michael’s family.

I knew from what she had told me of her past that she was adopted, but they weren’t what I was expecting. Well, the mother was a little bit. The father stood out next to his wife and daughter but fit in well with the people around him.

“Pleasure to meet you.” I shake her parents hands, when I reach Michael she doesn’t hesitate, keeping up the facade better than I am. 

“Good to meet you, our daughter has taken quite the interest in yours.” Amanda says gaily.   
“Michael was quite the athlete in high school it is a pity she turned her academic attention towards such a frivolous venture.” Sarek adds rather mutely. 

“Frivolous?” I question and he nods.  
“She had a full scholarship to the University of Texas to join their track team but she chose a smaller school closer to home to pursue her writing.” Sarek explains.

“Isn’t it better she pursue what she’s passionate about?” I say and Sarek nods.

“Of course, but one wonders how she expects to accomplish anything with only a bachelor's degree in literature. She’ll have very few opportunities once she graduates, whereas if she had gone out of state for school the program would have opened doors for her. Unless she is published I see very few doors opening.”

I’m shocked a man would speak so horribly of his daughter in front of strangers while she stands there and takes it. That’s not the Michael I know. Even her own mother says nothing. Are they that cowed by this man? 

“Well, at least I know you think so highly of me,” I say and Sarek raises an eyebrow in a pompous way that makes my blood boil.

“In what way?” He questions.  
“I chose to go against my own father’s ambitions for me and now I have tenure at a respected university, two published books and hopefully another on the way. Just goes to show you I guess that not every door was closed, but it appears minds still are. Excuse me.” 

I leave them, fully aware I had been rude but I couldn’t stand there another second listening to him insult not only my profession but Michael as well. 

I wash my hands in the guest bathroom, furiously scrubbing, needing to do something beside strangle the first person who crosses my path. There’s a quiet knock on the door and I sigh,

“Sydney, I’ll be right out.” I dry off my hands and contemplate sneaking a cigarette when they knock again. Groaning and throwing the towel I tear open the door.

“Jesus Syd, I-” Michael pushes me back into the bathroom, locking it behind her. “Michael, what-” she puts a hand over my mouth, someone walks past the door and then their footfalls disappear down the staircase. I lower my voice, “what do you think you’re doing?”

Michael removes her hand from my mouth, slowly, following the path of my neck. Then she rising up on her tiptoes and pressing her mouth against mine pushing me into the wall next to the shower. This wasn’t what I was expecting. She could at least slap me, let me know I was a bastard. Instead she’s kissing me. 

And god help me, I’m kissing her back, running my fingers through her hair and turning us so she’s now the one against the wall. It feels different, better, the same all at once. The way she moves there’s a new found confidence, yet the timidity is still there. 

Michael shoves my jacket from my shoulders and before long her legs are wrapped around me, urging me closer to her. Was this really happening? Was I about to fuck a student in my ex-wife’s home on my daughter’s birthday? 

“I was hoping you’d be here,” Michael whispers in my ear and I groan when I feel her hand between us, touching me through my trousers. “She doesn’t know.” She assures me and I move to kiss her again, her tongue sliding along mine. Someone knocks on the door,

“Occupied!” I shout and they move off. My hands rummage under her skirt, those legs I’ve loved finally bare to me. In my quest I find her wet, but there’s no time for what I want to do to her. 

“Please,” she begs me and it still feels like a dream. In a few brief seconds I find myself inside her again, once again encompassed by her heat. She shoves her face into my neck, kissing me there and biting a little. I make quick work of cutting through whatever barriers remain between us, thrusting my length into her with force. 

“Is this what you wanted?” I whisper against her lips when I tip her head back to look at me. She nods, holding onto my shoulders, pinned to the wall by my cock. “Is this what you needed?” 

“Yes.” She answers quietly and quickly, I feel her tighten considerably around me. If she’s in pain or was in pain by my entry she shows no sign of it. She’s changed in the last month. Whatever has happened has changed her, but it doesn’t dilute her. It’s made me want her even more. 

One of Michael’s hands grips the wall beside her, digging her nails into the fresh paint... biting so hard into the wall it chips. I swear I could bring down the whole third floor with how hard I’m fucking her. 

“Can you cum for me?” I ask her and she whimpers,  
“Yes... yes.” 

I rub her clit roughly, feeling another wave of hot warmth surround my cock as I feel her coming closer to the end, my own pressing hard into my gut. A final thought grips me: we’re going to be caught, Kat or Sydney or hell even Graham will force the door open and think I’m raping her. 

Or worse her own father will see what I’m doing to his daughter, debaching her in my ex-wife’s picture perfect home, Michael’s cum gushing down the wall behind her. The thought doesn’t strike fear in me, in fact, I welcome it. 

“Fuck... Michael.” I moan against her cheek before I feel her hug me tighter to her, buried deeper in her than any other woman before her. I release a breath and I’m cumming inside her, spewing my vile cum into her without a second thought about protection. 

She releases her own bated breath and strokes my cheek hers, kissing my forehead. She’s shaking in the aftermath of her orgasm, so am I. 

Did I... did I really just-

“I wasn’t trying to run away from you,” Michael’s voice is small but there’s no trace of stutter, in fact despite her body shaking in minor tremors, she sounds quite sure of herself. “My brother was in an accident.”

I dislodge myself from her, fixing her skirt, turning to the sink to once wash my hands and to hide myself. But the four foot long horizontal mirror does little to protect me.

“It’s alright,” I tell her. “I’m the one who... look, it’s fine. I acted inappropriately.”

Michael’s hand is on my back, we keep our voices low. We could still attract attention.

“Stop taking all the blame,” she says. “You don’t have to.”

“Don’t I? How did you even meet Sydney?”  
“Call it a cruel twist of fate. My father knows your ex. I guess they’re former colleagues.”

I grunt a response, small fucking world indeed. Of course the academic world was a small pool, especially in this neck of the woods.

“I’ll go down first,” I decide. “But I want to talk. I can meet you somewhere in town if you like.”


	8. Act Three: Local Man Thinks He's Still Got It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life moves on.

There was a point in my life where I had once thought I had achieved everything I ever sought to. Married the love of my life, had a kid, survived hell on earth in a foreign land, came home to write about it. On paper it’s what publishers call a best seller. In real life, it’s not something you would ever want to buy. 

After the events of 9/11 I watched dozens of my friends enlist but I stayed out of it. I wasn’t a soldier. I wasn’t the fighting type, I wasn’t my dad. Until my friends stopped coming home on their feet and instead came home missing limbs or worse in a pine box. Something changed in me, something snapped. I had to see it for myself. 

Being the patriotic idiot I was I enlisted and never looked back, until looking back became more and more tantalizing and more and more out of focus. I learned the jargon, the steps, the routine, the mundanity of it. Then one day, under blazing hot sun that never seemed to cease, it stopped. 

Shell shocked, my dad’s generation called it. We have a more technical name for it now, pseudo and shameful for many. PTSD. They give you pills, mental exercises. That’s how I met Kat. She was my recovery therapist, more like an intern still working on her degree. It worked in more ways than one. I was lucky, my scars were something I could teach myself to live with. Both the visible and invisible.

But sometimes you bring certain things into a marriage with you; things you thought love could prevail against. And for a while the love worked wonders. But all it takes is one thing, on the Fourth of July, to make everything revert and set you right back to square one. 

Sydney didn’t mean anything by it, all she remembers is lighting a match and watching bright lights explode in the sky; she didn’t know what daddy saw. I didn’t see my daughter in that moment; I saw an orphan wandering alone, crying and scared in a dirty dilapidated street in the middle of nowhere. I saw bombs exploding all around her, I saw her die. I saw Sydney die. 

Kat tried to tell me it was normal. I picked up a bottle and said “this was my new normal” and she better get used to it. And... well, you can imagine how the rest of my marriage went from there. Some ups, some downs. Lots of downs actually. But there were still good times, moments of marital bliss, moments of compassion and understanding, moments of compromise and adoration. 

Moments of despair, longing, yearning to be the man she deserved. Moments of despising her for not being that man. I never was. Kat fell in love with a project she felt compelled to fix. And now I sit across from another woman who looks at me the same way but different all the same. 

Michael doesn’t need to know what I did and didn't do overseas. She doesn’t need to hear the gruesome sorted details. She doesn’t need to know what a child blown apart looks like. She doesn’t need to know what a triple tap means, that it could be the difference between life and death despite whether or not an assailant or a civilian is rushing at you because sometimes you just don’t know. 

“I want to make things right,” she says after her second latte.  
“How do we do that?” I ask her gently. She takes a sip, thinks, another sip, toys with her fingernails. 

“I’ll transfer to a different school,” she blurts out, seemingly regretting it, “I’ve... I’ve looked into a few. Maybe putting myself far away from you will help.”

“How will that help?”   
“I don’t know.” She snaps and I’m taken aback. It’s the first time I’ve seen her show anger, irritation. Anything other than a morose or snobbish veneer. 

“Michael, I’m confused,” I finally say to her. “In the bathroom you seemed... eager to continue a relationship of some kind.” 

She nods a little but continues to ring her hands.

“I think you were right,” she says blandly. “I’m not ready for... for anything. I don’t even know who I am.” 

I reach down to her knee, stilling her ever present knee shaking the table. 

“No one does, not for a long, long time.” I tell her. “I’ll support you no matter what you want to do.”

Michael shifts away from me, I’m not sure what to do. She was warm before, now she seems cold. Is she doing this to save herself from me? It’s working because I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to give her what she wants. It will kill me to sever my relationship with her, even if it saves her in the process.

What she wants... she didn’t know what she wanted. That’s what made me release her hand. 

“You’re right, I was right,” I say, sniffing sharply, willing my legs to help me stand, to support my weight but they’re not ready yet. As if my mind will not connect to my limbs. 

I need to be rude to her, cold. I need to because she’s too good to be that way. I’ve sunk that low before, I can do it again.

She’s looking at me now, eyes glassy and confused. What was she expecting? I knew what I wanted, I wanted her. But the obstacles- those fucking obstacles. Her youth had once more become the beacon to bring to an other wordly orasis; but it was a mirage. She was too young, she said so herself; she didn’t know herself. 

I knew what that felt like, she needed time to discover who she really was. I couldn’t be selfish and stand in the way of that. I had to force her to see that this was better because right now I know better than anyone she’s having second thoughts, more doubts. 

“Wait-” she begins but I don’t let her, I don’t need anymore “it’s not you it’s me”, I don’t need anymore “I’m sorry I couldn’t fix you”. I don’t need “I wish things were different” or “maybe...” No time for maybes. No time for bullshit. Let’s just cut to the chase. 

“Let’s be real, Michael,” I say, rising from the table finally. “I’m too old for anything less.” 

She nods, she won’t break eye contact and neither can I. I’m sure everyone in this little lakeside view cafe are watching us, wondering, imagining... they’re probably more right than wrong. 

“Then,” she stands, holds out her hand, “this is goodbye.” It isn’t a question.   
“Goodbye, Michael.” I take her hand, but I’m stiff and my hold is loose and without remorse or feeling when I let go. 

Driving home, I doesn’t look back. Look back at what? It was an affair, a fling. Nothing more. If only it could’ve been just nothing more. The deep feelings that slunk into the pores of my skin, slithered into the crevices of my DNA, were there to stay until one day I finally wake up and didn’t think of Michael Burnham.

One day I’ll brush my teeth without thinking of the word “pop”, the memory of how embarrassed she had been when she confided in me... when she began to show her real self to me. 

I think I can still smell her or feel her, like a phantom scent. Lingering, just out of reach but faint enough and strong enough to follow only just. Ironically, later, in the bathroom, while brushing my teeth before turning in for the night something “pops”.

X

 

There was once a man who thought he could do anything; his father told him, “don’t swim across the lake, you’ll get tired before you make it to the other side,” so the man did. He did get tired but he kept swimming and made it to the other side. 

But when he tried to swim back he couldn’t, his legs didn’t work, his arms were heavy with fatigue. His mind played tricks on him, telling him the other side was just in sight. He could float the rest of the way, all he had to do was give into the water. All he had to do was let go of the little strength he had left.

All he had to do was admit defeat and let the waves carry him home. As the man sunk to the bottom of the lake, remembering his father’s wisdom and his warning, he smiled... he had made it across. 

What a crock of shit. No, fucker, you’re dead and no one will mourn you because you’re an idiot. 

But it’s the prologue to my latest work of... art? 

Local Man Thinks He’s Still Got It, Others Shrug.

It’s another best seller, it’s another this and that. Praise, accolades, interviews. I don’t drink as much, still smoke but it appears that the cancer that got my dad seems to elude me. 

Sydney continues to thrive in spite of me, how I managed to help create something as wonderful as her is still a mystery I’ll never solve. I’ve stopped trying to at this point. 

Suburban Fury hits the stands and flies off faster than shit through a goose. I feel good, proud for once in my life of something I’ve written. It’s a strange feeling to suddenly let go of doubt. When you get to a certain age you’re supposed to know who you are; you’re expected to achieve this sort of enlightenment in your mid twenties. I had reached that point, but then what they don’t tell you is that every decade something happens that shakes the foundations of who you thought you were.

At twenty five you’re dating a woman whose unlike anyone you’ve ever met, you’re caught up in the carefree, youthful whirlwind and despite the warning signs you believe you’re the duo that will beat the odds. 

You reach thirty, you still know who you are. You’re newlyweds, you’re in bliss, everyday is a honeymoon. Every moment is perfect, even when she burns dinner you laugh and go out for a bite because it’s still just you two. The sex is still amazing and surprising, you’re learning more about yourself through that person. 

Thirty two hits, newborns require more attention than anyone realizes until your elbow deep in gooey shit, she’s running a fever at four o’clock in the morning, your wife needs rest because she just pushed an eight pound human out of her and it’s your duty as a father to keep your daughter alive for the next eighteen years. 

It’s your job to fall asleep in the rocking chair with your daughter on your chest while she drools and stains another shirt, while she pokes you in the eye, throws food at you, demands a treehouse, sets the deck on fire on the Fourth of July and decides she will be an olympic athlete and you’re a heartless fucker if you ever said no to any of that.

Sleep doesn’t exist anymore. You fear for your child every second of everyday even when you don’t realize it because the moment you look away is the moment something terrible happens. Like when Sydney fell off her bike after she demanded the training wheels be removed. Kids fall, kids hurt themselves, that’s part of life. But suddenly your wife is on a hare trigger; suddenly your mother in law is calling you asking why Sydney has a bruised knee.

Suddenly, you don’t know your life and the warnings your father gave you are a bile of absolute truth you were too stubborn and pig headed to give credence to. Your wife spends more time at her parents, more time at work, you resent her. Your daughter becomes your best friend, you build her that treehouse because kids like Sydney deserve the best treehouse. 

By thirty five you hope your wife is having an affair, you hope she leaves you. 

By forty, you’ve invented the affair and she does leave you. By forty four you’ve had an affair with a student, you fall in love with her, you don’t realize this until you want to tell her but it’s too late. You didn’t rush to the airport to convince her to stay, you didn’t text her or call her. 

You send her a copy of your book prior to its release but you don’t sign it. You just hope she reads it and the dedication. 

By forty five you’ve found yourself again, you’re happier, content. Still smoking but not drinking nearly as much. I haven’t dipped my toes back into the dating pond yet, still enjoying the me time honestly. I took a sabbatical from teaching, bought a little fixer-upper further north. I like it, it’s quiet and the words seem to pop better up here. 

But you still miss her- I still miss her. I heard from Sydney who heard it from Michael’s mother that Michael was doing very well at American University after her transfer. She was taking on a student teaching position, positively thriving. Might have even started dating again. I heard through the grapevine she and her boyfriend Ash had split not long after her transfer.

I feel mildly responsible for that too. But I didn’t get to know him, so I moved on from it fairly quickly. 

I miss our conversations, the tingling sexual tension that was mutually passing between us but was too forbidden to act on until we did. I miss the potential for more, the anxiety she gave me and abated all at once. 

Local Man Still Harbors Feelings for Girl Twenty-Two.

Shit. Has it been two years? I still think about her, that’s how I know I’m still fucked in the head. But it’s become habit almost, it feels wrong to want to not think about her. It doesn’t make me sad or unhappy anymore, it’s just there. It used to suffocate me, keep me awake. Now it’s almost like a comfort. If it went away... what else would I feel? Was it wrong to feel content with the thing that hurts if it’s the only thing you feel most?

How did I still find myself moving through each day, keeping myself busy, all the while fixated and ravenous with the impulse to be near her? 

When I sit on my porch, sometimes, smoking and blowing the grey clouds off into the air, I imagine she’s there; reading quietly beside me, she’s so clear in my imagination that I’m impressed with myself. It doesn’t hurt to imagine her like this, but it does make me wish I had convinced her otherwise sometimes. 

But it was the right choice. Michael needed to find herself before she found herself stuck as wet nurse to an old man. Before she gave things up or took things on, before she was in too deep. I had feared we had been beyond that point already but the lack of communication, virtual radio silence on both sides, was deafening. 

It was alright. I wanted her to find out who she was and how she fit into this world and this universe. I didn’t want to cheapen or take away from her journey. I wanted her to experience everything. I wanted to smoke a cigarette and decide never to do that again, I wanted her to get high, toss back a few shots, enjoy the night life with her friends. I wanted her to experience whatever things she felt she had been missing out on. She couldn’t do any of those things when me attached to her hip. 

And I didn’t want to deprive her of a single moment of her journey into finding herself.

So you can imagine my surprise when, out of the blue, or I should say darkness, she appeared out of thin air and the ghostly mist of my cigarette. In the darkness, like she had been the first time I saw her. 

“Hello, professor.”


	9. Act Three: A Friend in Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every friend needs a Tilly.

The driveway was packed. Mercedes, Jaguars, Tesla, you name it the Sareks were hosting the tinsel town in their own little neck of the woods. And I mean, fuck! What a place. Michael had given me great details on the new house her adoptive parents had purchased, not to mention the summer home they boasted on the cape. But this was a palace. I didn’t grow up poor but I didn’t grow up like this. I guess I underestimated what a government official can really make. 

“Sylvia, thank you so much for joining us,” Mrs. Sarek is the coolest lady, I don’t know how someone like Mr. Sarek ever- okay, that’s rude. Obviously opposites attract in many, many ways. But she was just so down to earth compared to her husband. He was... well, kind of weird. Very weird in the He Might Be a Murderer We Just Don’t Know Yet kind of way. 

I caught just the faintest glimpse of Michael’s elusive younger brother, Spock, disappearing around a corner when I entered. He’s pretty shy compared to his mother. I think the most he’s ever said to me was “hello” and “goodbye”. 

“You’re sure your mother won’t mind you spending Christmas here?” Mrs. Sarek asks me as she takes my coat. 

“Honestly, I have no idea which country my mother is in right now,” I laugh off but Mrs. Sarek gives me that look everyone gives me when it comes to that woman- I mean, my mother. I learned a long time ago meeting her approval was impossible if she wasn’t even on the same continent. “I’d rather be with Michael.” I add quickly, with a peachy smile I perfected a long time ago. 

“Well, come on in, make yourself at home. Michael is upstairs in her room, you remember the way?” Mrs. Sarek says, I can tell she needs to get back to her guests. The house was positively buzzing with gaiety and joy. 

I practically run up the stairs, my heavy duffle bag not impeding me. I missed Michael; skype dates and phone calls in between our busy schedules honestly didn’t cut it when you had a best friend who was the closest thing to a sister you’ll ever have. I never took that for granted. And in Michael’s own stoic way, I knew she appreciated it. Hell, who would make sure she actually ate in between classes, her job, her volunteer work etc...? Me!

“Yoo-hoo, the Christmas elf is here!” I say, tiptoeing down the hall towards her bedroom, knocking lightly. The door is ajar, she’s on her side on the bed. “Mikey?” I whisper, she’s dozing. The party has been going for at least two hours, she probably needed to lie down. Her computer it open on the desk, nothing new. 

There’s a cardboard box open at the foot of the bed, curled under her arms is a fresh hard cover. God, this girl doesn’t know how to give her eyes a break. I tease her she’ll go blind from all the reading she does. I gently slip the book out from under her arms. The cover is white, black font and an illustration of fire: SUBURBAN FURY, by Gabriel Lorca. 

I didn’t even know he was publishing a new book! I knew Michael had taken his class last year and I teased her relentlessly about how she obviously had a crush on him. I had observed there was some sort of mentor mentee relationship blooming... until I opened the front of the book I guess I was naive in my way of thinking about their relationship. 

Upon reading the dedication I can’t stop myself from touching her hip, my other hand over my heart, the book falling between my legs onto her bed. 

“Michael,” I say, shaking her a little. She groans and sits up, rubbing her eyes.  
“Tilly?” She asks, her voice tired and her eyes darting from between myself and the book. She swallows and I have more than my fair share of questions. I hold it up.

“This hasn’t even reached the shelves yet, not for another week at least. Christmas release, makes sense.” I say, I’m remaining calm which is unusual for me. Even I know myself well enough to know that a few years ago I would’ve avoided the topic all together. But now so much of Michael’s behavior the last two years makes sense... if I’m right about my theory. I hate being right. 

“He... it was a gift.” Michael says, crossing her legs in front of her.  
“Right.” I say, I open the front and point at the dedication. “I know you and I know you wouldn’t have told him that willy nilly and then he writes this- you don’t do things like that.”

Michael pulls her old teddy bear to her chest; it’s a small teddy bear, one of the last mementos of her real parents. It took years for her to finally tell me that. And she told him something private after having known him months. I felt a little embarrassed, I felt anxious and annoyed and a little angry. 

“I’m not trying to put you on the spot but these last two years you haven’t been the same and now I think I know why.” I tell her gently, keeping my own personal feelings out of it because this isn’t about me. “Is this why you and Ash broke up?” 

“There were other reasons but yes, this also didn’t help.”   
“Shit. I knew you had a crush but- wait, Michael, did he... did Professor Lorca hurt you?” 

Michael lets the implication of my question sink in, shaking her head and taking the book from me, placing it beside her, her hand resting on the cover. 

“No,” she answers, meeting my eyes. “It was entirely mutual. I wanted to tell you but-”  
“Why didn’t you? Michael you can’t keep bottling everything up!” I say, more hurt she would do this to herself than keep something from me. I knew Michael more than liked her privacy but we had made so many strides in our friendship. I was the open book, the heart, she was the private brain, calculating and mindful and logical. We worked well together. And now she’s reverting back to the way she was when we first met. Closed off, unable to process her own emotions or feelings. 

“It’s not healthy, you know this,” I tell her and she nods. “This literally explains... everything.”  
“You don’t know everything,” she mutters, I know she didn’t say it to be hurtful so I let it go.   
“You’re right, I don’t. But... this is clearly hurting you.” 

Michael draws in a long breath, I take her hand and she squeezes it without giving away too many of her emotions. It’s okay, a few years ago the thought of holding my hand for comfort would’ve been intrusive to her. Now she does it without prompting. That’s progress. 

“I... I was in too deep before I even realized it,” Michael says, releasing a heavy breath. “He was the only one who seemed to understand, you know? I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. I know that sounds like an excuse but I never thought... never thought in a million years he would want me like that.”

“Is it over?” I ask her gently and she nods, wiping her face.   
“We ended it over the summer. It’s for the best but... god, Tilly, why do I still feel this way? Shouldn’t it have gone away? I didn’t even feel like this when Ash and I broke up. It didn’t hurt this bad.” 

Sighing, I scoot over to her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. 

“It’s okay, you’re going to be okay. Hey,” I look down at her and she glances up at her. “It’s not the end of the world.” 

Michael snorts and wipes her nose. 

“No, at least if the world was ending there would be end to this misery.”   
“Hey, don’t talk to like that,” I say strongly, not scolding her but damn it this funk needed to end. 

It was Christmas for fucks sake!

“You’re coming with me,” I say getting up from the bed, opening her closet and searching for a pair of shoes. 

“Tilly,” Michael groans my name and I ignore her, I’m too furious. Some stupid old professor has broken her heart, ruined her year, ruined her Christmas and god damn I was not going to stand for it! 

“No, we’re going to be jolly, happy, merry- we’re going to have Christmas!” I say decidingly and Michael snaps her mouth shut. 

“The Raft is open all night, we’re twenty one, hot, funny, smart and we’re going to go to that bar, take some shots, puke in the bathroom and make out with someone. You got it?” I toss her shoes at her feet, she too in shock to argue. I notice I have my hands on my hips... shit, I really am a mother hen. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Michael implores me but I know I’ve convinced her because she’s putting her shoes on.

“I know I don’t,” I say, coming towards her. “But I’m not about to let my best friend... my sister sit here, alone and sad during the most wonderful time of the year because some asshole broke her heart.” 

Michael pauses, one shoe in her hand the other on her foot. She lowers her eyes, shakes her head. Huh? What’s this?

“Tilly,” she says, “He didn’t break my heart. I ended it.”   
“Holy fuck.”  
“Yeah. He just gave me the extra push I needed. I just... I miss him.” 

I don’t know what else to say; most people think the person who does the actual ending of a relationship has no guilt afterwards, no sense of sadness or loss because if they ended it then that means it wasn’t something they really wanted. That’s not true. Sometimes the person who ends the relationship is the one who put the mot effort it, revealed the most, gave to most. 

“Come on,” I say holding out my hand. “Let’s go have a beautiful night.” 

Somehow Spock got roped into being our DD. He was utterly miserable. Then again, being the only nineteen year old with a book in a dive bar surrounded by dozens of horny and drunk men and women probably wasn’t the best environment but hey, the kid needed to live a little!

“There’s at least several health code violations happening on the dance floor alone,” Spock grumbled at one point. God, the kid was never going to have a girlfriend with that attitude. 

“Loosen up, Spock,” I tell him, ruffling his hair which he detested. He was like my little brother too, of course Michael wasn’t nearly as interested in teasing Spock as I was. She was playing more keeper than partier. As if someone was going to snatch him up. 

“What do you think I should do?” Michael asks me at one point, I take another shot.  
“Pertaining to...?”   
“You know.” Michael says, giving me a knowing look. I hold up my finger, take another shot, cough, sputter, repeat. 

“Did you... ya know?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. Michael glances at Spock, he’s not listening, too engrossed in his book. 

“Yes.”   
“How many times?”  
“Twice.”

Another shot, cough, sputter, repeat. 

“Was it good? Oh shit- that was your first-” Michael presses her hand to my mouth, Spock doesn’t bat an eye. His headphones are plugged in... maybe he can still hear us? I don’t know. I’m feeling pretty good though right about now. 

“Yes.” She answers through clenched teeth, then she takes a shot, her lips curling back for a moment. “It was the first time I-I felt anything.” 

I grin, resting my chin on my hand. 

“That’s how it should be the first time,” I say, taking her hand in mine. She does another shot.   
“I mean... it hurt, but... after it was- Tilly, it was like-”  
“Yeah.” I can feel myself starting to get drowsy, but happy and warm. I know I’ve reached my limit but Michael has some catching up to do. 

“So he’s... ya know, gifted?” I ask and Michael blushes and it’s not the booze that’s doing it to her. Shit, I can feel myself blushing, suddenly imagining Professor Lorca doing all kinds of naughty things. I would regret thinking such things tomorrow but right now I suddenly realized how hot he was. 

“Gifted,” Michael repeats the word. “Doesn’t begin to describe it.” She’s smirking and I know the alcohol is loosening her tongue in ways it wouldn’t normally be. That’s okay, it just means she always wanted to talk about it but didn’t have the courage to at the time. 

“And?” I ask her.  
“I guess I just didn’t know how... how good it could feel giving up control like to someone. Everyone always talks about how good it feels, it’s the best feeling in the world blah-blah-blah but... it’s the safety of being with him that was the best part. Yeah, it felt good but... the way he looked at me,” she stops, shivering and touching her lips absentmindedly. “I can still feel it.”

Fuck, I want to cry. Michael didn’t just have a crush on Professor Lorca, he didn’t just have the hots for a student. They were in love! Jesus did they even know it? I was beginning to sober up and I wasn’t ready for that so I ordered another round. We got halfway through our shots when I decided enough was enough and puking was inevitable. On the way to the bathroom I warned Michael I was going to cry if I puked and sure enough I did. 

Spock waited, embarrassed and traumatized, for us. On the way home I remember we both kept asking him to slow down, to turn down the heat, then turn up the heat because we’re drunk dumbasses who can’t make up our minds. 

I remember Sarek not being overtly pleased with the sight of his drunk daughter but Amanda made the point- thank god for that woman- that we were of legal drinking age and Spock got us home safely. Of course we really shouldn’t have dragged him with us. 

“The evening was quite entertaining.” Spock said to his father before aiding my drunk ass and Michael up the stairs. 

“Maybe you should get in touch,” I say, drowsy and already feeling the spins ready to take place, rolling onto my side to face her in her bed. 

“No.” She slurs, shaking her head.  
“He dedicated his- his thing- his book to you, get in touch.” I poke her hard in the ribs and she groans in pain. 

“He did, didn’t he?” Michael says, her eyes closing and a yawn overcomes her.  
“What did it... oh, god- what did it say again?” I wait for her answer, when none comes I lean over her, she’s passed out. I smirk and snuggle closer to her, placing her teddy bear on her chest. 

“Merry Christmas!”


	10. Act Three: Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reunited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for those who are squeamish to violence and war.

I choke on the smoke, and my dumb thick fingers crush the cigarette forcing the cherry to droop and then drop into my hand. I burn the side of my finger and hiss loudly. 

“Son of a bitch.” I stand, flicking the butt into the can I have next to my Old Man Sits on Porch chair. 

“Professor!” She says, worriedly and coming to my aid. She takes my hand and without even realizing it, without noticing it, we’re touching. It’s to help me in my stupidity of course but I’m holding my breath. She’s near me. Her scent surrounds me, it’s not a phantom. It’s not some parlor trick or placebo effect. She’s right in front of me. My greatest illusion come true.

Where had she even come from? I didn’t even hear a car... but the touch feels too human to be a dream. Maybe I’m having a seizure, maybe I hit my head?

“Michael?” I get her attention, it doesn’t hurt so much now. I know what getting shot feels like, this doesn’t come close- well, not the burn. Feeling her touch me again feels more akin to the aftermath of getting shot; when you realize “hey I just got shot but I’m still alive”. The “still alive” part was Michael in a nutshell.

“You really shouldn’t smoke,” she says in a haughty tone. “It’s a terrible habit.”  
“Michael.” I lay my hand over hers, her inspection of my finger had been over long before it had begun. “How did you find me?”

“You left a forwarding address at the school,” she explains, lifting my hand and kissing my knuckles sweetly. “I missed you.”

“Come inside, I’ll make coffee.” I say, guiding her with my hand holding hers. “All I have is this fancy columbian blend, I hope that’s ok. Sydney got it last father’s day.” 

I don’t know why I’m telling her any of this useless manusia. Who the fuck cares where your coffee beans came from, Gabe? That’s not why she’s here! Shit. I hope that’s not why she’s here...

I do a quick sweep of my place with just my eyes; it’s not too disheveled but it’s obvious I live alone and take few visitors. My hands to itch to organize the monstrosity that is my desk... but I might as well leave it alone. I show her into the kitchen, still holding her hand, being careful to tell her about the dip in the floor between the doorframe.

“How’s American University?” I ask her, releasing her hand to begin making the aforementioned coffee. She doesn’t ask how I know, I hope she told Sydney so that it would eventually get back to me.

“It’s good. Great, actually. I’m even taking an art history class, along with student teaching, volunteering, working, I don’t have a lot of free time. But it’s... it’s wonderful.” 

Words like “good” evolving into “great” and ending in “wonderful” do more than please me. I find myself genuinely happy for her. She was never meant to be stuck on a mountain top in the middle nowhere at a school that, despite being a good one, wasn’t a great one. It was no man’s land for an individual as talented as Michael.

“That’s great to hear,” I say, scooping the right amount of coffee grounds into the filter. “How do your folks feel about the change?” 

I hear shuffling, fabric moving. She’s taking off her coat, getting comfortable. In my head I imagine it’s because she’s planning on staying a while. A chair is pulled out from the table, she sits.

“Dad was thrilled when I said I was transferring then I told him it wasn’t to pursue the athletic career path he had chosen for me. We’re not really speaking right now.” She says, her voice lowering at the last part. I pour the water, set the coffee maker and turn back to her, leaning against the countertop.

I know better than anyone what going against your father’s plan feels like. I doubt the drought in their relationship will last long. Fathers and daughters are like that, somehow daughters seem to have more to prove than sons. A boy can knock up a girl and a father can live with it; your little girl gets knocked up and the whole world is a never ending cycle of “where did I go wrong?”

It shouldn’t be, but that’s the way it seems to have been for generations. I know if Sydney ever disappointed me, and I doubt that would ever happen, I would be a mess. But I would love her and die for her a thousand times before I ever thought of disowning her for a mistake that made her human.

“He’ll come around, I’m sure.” I say, forcing myself to believe my own words since I only met the man once and my first impression of him was that he was a giant asshole. 

“Yeah, me too.” She says but it doesn’t sound very convincing. I clear my throat, trying to move past this obviously sore subject for her. Not that I don’t want to hear about it, it’s just she doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

“Did you miss me too?” She asks, quietly and a little unsure if she should be.  
“Did you get my book?” Answering her question with my own. She nods, her eyes meeting mine and shy smile tickling her mouth.

“The dedication was... I was extremely flattered and a little,” she pauses trying to find the right words, I feel butterflies in my gut. “I think you give me too much credit.”

“You didn’t get enough as far as I’m concerned.” I tell her honestly. She blushes.   
“You immortalized me.” She says and I’m finally breathless with the fact that she’s even here, sitting in my kitchen, in my humble home that I’ve made for myself. My dream realized, she’s here at last.

“Authors have been immortalizing the objects of their affections for centuries. You still deserve more.” 

I wish I could say I remember how exactly it happened, but I don’t. One moment we’re waiting for coffee to brew the next she’s holding me in an embrace I could only have pictured in my wildest dreams. I think it was the gentle, barely physical way she stroked my back that set me off. My knees began buckling, my heart was pounding, next thing I knew I was struggling to stand and slowly, ever so slowly, I was on my knees in front of her, hugging her little waist and burying my face in her hip. 

“Shh, it’s ok. I’m here now.” She whispered, cupping my face and forcing me to look at her. 

Michael Burnham put me to bed, slowly removing her shoes and pulling the covers over us. We held each other, our legs coiled like cobras around one another. The fire in the other room crackling, I’ll need to put another log on. March is still a bitch of a month in the north. Spring is so close yet so far away.

“Were you always like this?” She asks me, before I can answer she poses another question. “What were you like before?” 

I tuck an arm under my head, my hand making lazy circles around her clothed arm.

“I think I was always restless,” I tell her, realizing I’m staring into a doorway I’ve never stepped through before... Kat was different. When I opened up to Kat about my experience it was her job to listen, then the inevitable Nightingale Syndrome happened and the rest is history. But I had never just told someone what happened. Michael was different from Kat in the sense that she wasn’t doing some duty, she wasn’t there to perform a task. She just wanted to know so she could know me better. That was fine.

“My dad had been a vet,” I begin, I can see him now. “Retired a full colonel, respected, had his own business.”

“What did he do?” She asks. I smile, I can see his workshop now. The one he bought and the one at the house. The smell of wood, the drills, the tools. Wood shavings flying here and there to land is soft piles on the floor.

“He was a carpenter. His hands were these giant mits of callous, rough and mean looking but... I remember at my parents fortieth anniversary they danced to Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me. I had never seen him be so gentle with my mom before. Like she was made of glass. It was the last time we were all together, as a family.” 

Michael leans up, propping her body up on an elbow, giving me a look.

“I know, I’m avoiding what you really asked.” I say smiling and she snuggles back into my side. “It’s... just know it’s not pleasant, Michael. I’ve never told anyone outside of a shrink.” 

She nods a little, then kisses my hands again. I don’t know why it turns me on when really as far as the moment goes it shouldn’t. 

“Well, you see I... I was working a dead end cubicle job when 9/11 happened. Data entry, boring shit. I had never held a gun in my life because dad never wanted me to despite his background. He never wanted me to be a soldier, he wanted me to do something else. To build things, to make something like he did. After years of being his apprentice in his shop I rebelled and went off looking for something to do with myself. Ended up at a desk hating every minute of it and too stubborn to go home and admit he was right. I was twenty when my best friend, Mark Tambo, told me he had enlisted. Big guy, smart, gentle giant type. He joined the Marines and said, ‘come on Gabe lets go defend our country!’ I laughed and said I wasn’t the soldier type but drop me a line when you kill Osama.”

I’m smiling... I can see his face. That six foot six legend, all the girls wanted to be with Mark. And why not? He was a nice guy, sweet and treated women better than I did when we were young. He could’ve been- 

I feel my smile drop. His mom’s on the phone with me... I’m at my stupid desk job on break and I vomit my BLT onto the mens bathroom floor before I reach the toilet. 

“He... he was shot. Three times in the chest and once it the back. There wasn’t a chance he was gonna make it. After a few more friends I couldn’t take it anymore. One guy I knew through Mark came home on leave for a few months then went right back. He looked like shit. He was a nice guy from the little I knew him but he came back... mean. Just... mean, Michael. I guess, like a wandering fool with no idea what I wanted to do with my life, I thought... ok. Let’s see what’s out there.” 

I tell her how basic was the worst of it. How they break you down and bring you back up. How you’re supposed to look out for the guys around you. How you need to make the bad decisions into right ones. 

“They called me Gallivanting Gabe,” I chuckle at the name.

I can see my drill sergeant screaming me at while I did push ups, yelling in me ear that I was a piece of shit. Oh look here comes Gallivanting Gabe again, watch out guys, this guy is gonna be shot his first week!

“Why?” She asks me, running her fingers over my arm.   
“Because I was always the first one in, because I couldn’t fucking help myself. Because the only reason I rose through the ranks and made it to sergeant was because I just couldn’t help myself. Then... once I got there, it turned into Lucky Lorca.” 

I tell her about all the near fatal misses that could’ve killed me; about the one shot that landed home in my shoulder but only hit meat. The scar on my left side from a knife fight in a bar between myself and a drunk local. The countless RPG misses, the raid where the floor collapsed beneath me and I walked away with only dented pride. I play it off as a joke but the look on her face tells me.... She’s going to ask. She’ll ask and I’ll have to tell her. 

“How many people did you kill?” I feel a chill go down my spine and I swallow, sitting up because I suddenly feel choked and suffocated again. 

“Ya know,” I say with a shrug. “I wasn’t Lucky Lorca just because I could avoid getting killed. I’m... also a very good shot. Sometimes if they were short a sniper or two I filled in the gaps. Christ, I haven’t even held a gun since I got back. But I’d know. Muscle memory, I’d just know... I’m still a crack shot.” 

“Why did you come back?” She asks and I frown. “Other than the obvious.” She clarifies.

“My luck kind of ran out as far the ability to handle what I was seeing. You grow numb to certain aspects of it. But not seeing your brothers get shot or... kids getting-” I stop, overwhelmed, my heart is racing again and she seems to realize it’s getting a little heavy. Before I can even think of it she’s reaching to the nightstand and handing me a cigarette, the ashtray and a lighter. 

I smile, taking it without question. 

“Thanks.” I say and she kisses my cheek before I light it. I place the ashtray next to me. I don’t recommend smoking in bed especially when there’s a beautiful woman next to you. 

“You really wanna hear this?” I ask her after a time and she nods.   
“I think we both do.” She says and I sigh, knowing she’s right. 

“It was a routine patrol. Another city block- not even a city anymore. My buddy Jenson was joking to me about how the brass was planning on promoting me again. I laughed it off. We all laughed... then the laughter was cut short by the driver yelling RPG but he was already dead, the aim was clear to us at the time, they wanted to kill the driver. Simple. Makes sense, kill the driver and the escort stops and all hell breaks loose because at that point you’re pinned down in a firefight. Except... we weren’t the target. We later found out we happened to be passing by at the wrong time, the building we were passing was the actual target. 

Fucked up thing is, if we hadn’t been there, if it had been hit, fifty plus innocent people would’ve been killed. We lowered the civilian casualty that day to ten. But there were other casualties. We gathered ourselves, we rallied, we opened fire. It wasn’t a militant group we were shooting at, Michael. It was a bunch of fucking kids fucking around with something they got ahold of. I don’t know how they got it but they did. We found out after making it back base one kid’s dad had a beef with another kid’s dad and the injured party wanted to make a statement. Some fucking statement.

By the time Jenson threw the grenade I saw it... the smoke was clearing, the dust, the gravel, the ringing in my ears. It all cleared and that’s when I saw her. This little kid, this... baby. She was just a baby. They were all babies, Michael. Jenson had this look on his face- this... what have I have done look. He knew, we all knew what was about to happen. I tried running to her but-” I’m shaking, crying, she’s holding me like my mother used to.

“She just... fell apart, like a... like the puppeteer holding the strings that kept her together, kept her upright, just- just let go. Christ, Michael, she just fell apart. I broke down after that. I... I didn’t speak, I didn’t eat. I didn’t... I just wasted away in my cot until they had to do something. So they slapped a purple heart on me and sent me home. Honorably discharged. What a crock of shit.” 

I take a hit from my cigarette, tapping the ash into the tray. 

“When I got home I was thirty pounds underweight, drinking like a fish and just waiting for myself to die. I was assigned a shrink, Kat, my ex-wife, that’s how we met. You wanted to know what I was like, what I did. I don’t remember anymore, Michael. Except I know who I am now.” 

Michael kisses the side of my neck, I close my eyes and shiver as soon as her lips touch me. Her kisses don’t stop there, they travel to my jawline to my lips. I’m getting lost in her kiss when her tongue brushes against mine. Leaning into her until I remember,

“Shit.” I turn away to stub out the cigarette and move the ashtray onto the floor. “Not really in the mood to kill us both.” 

She laughs warmly but it fades as soon as I kiss her again, moving her further onto her back and deeper into the pillows. She moans faintly when I touch her breast, her body is so warm against mine. 

“Keep going.” She encourages me when I lean back to look at her. I follow her instructions, returning to her mouth with added vigor. I feel her holding me with her legs, her hands. 

Accepting me, loving me. 

Brave girl, brave little soul.

I lean back again, this time to unbutton her jeans, tugging them hurriedly down her legs they get caught on her socks.

“This is so not sexy,” I comment and she laughs again, leaning up to help me. “Are these... what is this?” I ask, inspecting the sock in question. 

“They’re walrus’.” She says as if it’s obvious.   
“If that’s a walrus I’m fucking Robert Downey Jr.” I tease coming back down to cover her.  
“Well you’re old enough.” I tickle her side, my fingers biting into her soft flesh and she cries out, panting and fighting against me until I have her tiny wrists pinned to the bed.

“I have a sneaking suspicion you like me because I’m old,” I whisper against her lips, my fingers touching her stomach before dipping lower to cup her mound through her panties. She whimpers a little, biting her bottom lip.

“No,” she says shaking her head. “I like you... oh- I like you for other reasons.”   
“Yeah?” I ask, keeping my mouth just out reach from her, teasing her. Making it last, making her beg. 

“Yes,” she answers, breathy and sweet with a double meaning. “I... I like how you touch me, I like how you make me feel like no one else.” 

Well fuck me sideways with a pair of pliers. 

“And I...” 

At her last breath I slip my hand beneath her panties, finding her unbelievably wet. 

“I love you, Gabriel.” She finally breathes out as I sink my finger inside of her, I kiss her deeply as I release her wrists and move down her body, kissing her stomach and the insides of her thighs. She watches me, knowing this isn’t something we’ve ever done before. I kiss closer and closer until I have to remove her underwear then I don’t waste time. 

She’s taste like a woman, like a supple, perfect woman. It turns me on listening to her pants, to hear her whimpers. To know she feels this way because of me, to know she’s coming apart under my touch because of me... that she’s never felt this before. 

I drag my tongue up and down her opening, spreading her apart with my fingers. Fuck, it’s not how I imagined. It’s far superior than any fantasy. She’s with me every step of the way, holding my hand to her hip, bringing the other up to her breast. She took her shirt and bra off at some point. 

When she cums, she’s sitting up and watching me until she can’t and the spasms in her body push her over the edge and she falls back into the bed. Lying there she looks at me, she looks hungry. 

“Take your fucking clothes.” She orders and I’ve never heard her swear like that before. I follow suit before joining her again. She pushes me onto my back and I swear this is a whole new side of her I never expected to see. The look in her eye when she takes me inside of her speaks volumes. It’s not the same Michael, but it’s ok. It’s not the shy, unsure young woman I had to leave behind two years ago.

That girl didn’t know who she was or what she wanted, she had to find that. 

But the woman on top of me, the woman taking me and making me hers, is a woman who knows what she wants. This is a woman who knows exactly who she is. Michael did find herself, and she still came back to me. 

I watch her as she moves slowly over me, holding her hips and pulling to her my chest, running my tongue and my mouth across her hard nipples. 

“Take me, take me please.” She whispers into my ear. I prop my knees up behind her, supporting her ass and her back and I begin with deep slow strokes into her, taking her breath away; her hands pressed into my chest holding my heart in her hands. 

My arms are around her and I feel myself on the brink, the edge of the dam and it’s breaking. 

“I... I’m so close.” She says as if she’s surprised, I bring her there, willing myself to cum with her because it’s so much better when you cum together. When she cums I’m right there with her, bringing her through it. When I cum she’s looking me in the eyes, watching me... the urge to look away is gone and I let her see me in my most vulnerable moment, when all the masks are torn away and all that’s left is you and the person you love. 

Neither of us can barely move afterwards, I lay my face in her chest, just lying there. 

Local Man Finds Solace For First Time in His Life.

“Christ, you’re beautiful,” I say, out of breath and kissing every inch of sweaty skin I can find.   
“I’m sure my face looks silly like that,” she says, her hand is at my back again.  
“Like what?”   
“You know... during- during climax.” She says and I chuckle, she’s come so far and grown so much but she still won’t say certain things. It’s ok, it’s sweet. 

“I’m sure mine isn’t any better.” I say tipping my head back to look at her. She strokes my cheeks with her thumbs.

“No, you look funny,” she says, she actually snorts a little with laughter.   
“Excuse me?” I say, taking mild offense.   
“You just look so angry.” She makes an angry face, as fit to imitate me during orgasm and I groan.

“Ok, hop off little lady, this angry train has reached its last stop.” I say, grabbing her by the hips but she wiggles closer to me. 

“Come on, I’m kidding.” She says and I grunt a response and kiss the top of her head. “You... you actually look really... I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Well use a different word other than angry.” I tease and she chuckles.  
“Possessive, and I like it.” 

I look down at her and she smiles back up at me. 

“Possessive, huh?” I feel another giant ego boost.   
“Not in a sexist way-”  
“I get it, Michael, it’s ok.” I assure her with another kiss. 

“So what happens now?” She asks me. I scoot up the bed and turn off the light.   
“Now, this is old bastard needs some rest.” I say closing my eyes, feeling her arms tighten around me. She’s impatient she wants me to be serious. Honestly, I am being serious.

“I mean, later.”  
“Later I plan on making love to you again.” I answer and I feel her sit up, in the dark she’s still clear as day to me.

“Gabriel.” She says more sternly and I sigh.   
“Later, I’m bringing you to a little breakfast place you’ll love. Later, I’m going to hold your hand in public and not give a damn. Later, I plan on meeting your parents officially. But right now, just go to sleep.” 

She curls up next to me, content with my answer. 

“Dad is gonna love you,” she says sarcastically as we both begin drifting off.  
“Hmm, it would be nice to have a dad actually like me for once.” 

No more is said. Nothing else needs to be said. I’m almost afraid when I wake that it will all have been a dream. But I lose that fear when I hear her snoring. I suddenly feel restless again. I dress quietly, sneaking onto the porch for one last cigarette, shivering at the loss of her warmth, but it will be there again when I go back inside. 

In the smoky haze I see my parents dancing, Mel Carter belting out those powerful emotional notes. I see a long and happy life they had together, despite their son, despite wars and presidents and emotional trauma. Despite economy booms and falls, despite religion and background. Despite everything. They made it. 

I raise my cigarette to the stars, you can see every single one of them out here. 

“Here’s to you old man.” 

Moments pass by us, we don’t think about most of them. But they all mean something in one way or another. Michael taught me that, she taught me to realize what was going on around me. She made me see again when I had been blind to nothing but my own misery. I had been comfortable in the misery, in the bleak and twisted parts of my mind until she showed up and revealed a different path. 

It was like the magician’s trap door, it had been there the whole time. I just needed someone to lift the curtain and make me see again. 

Beyond the curtain was a world of infinite possibilities. Maybe we’ll make it, maybe we’ll get hitched and people who knew us as who we were back then can speculate all they want. Kat can wonder, Sydney will be confused. Michael’s family would be a trip at Thanksgiving, I’m sure. 

Her father looking at me sideways across the table, burning holes into my very soul. We’ll joke about it at first, then we’ll argue, then we’ll make up. It’s the way of things. No new relationship is completely virtuous. They all have the skeletons waiting inside the closet of honeymoon butterflies and new car smell.

Pitfalls, downfalls, ups and we’re doing okays are just part of the deal. I can see Michael for years ahead of me, greying in her hair, wrinkles at her eyes, maybe a kid... maybe not, who knows? Moments of bliss, moments of sadness and sorrow. It’s all part of the game, you can’t escape it but you can look forward to it. I’ve spent so much time looking back that I forgot that looking forward was even an option too. Then Michael showed me the way.


	11. Dedication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Immortalized Muse.

Dedication

To the first and last woman on earth.  
Thanks for making this... pop.


End file.
